Ashes to Dust
by horsecrazy2
Summary: Political tension between Gardens ignites a war that will burn the world. Seifer Almasy/Quistis Trepe
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: So this is a fic that isn't really supposed to exist. I was trying to let go of fanfiction for good so I could concentrate on original writing, but when I went back to finish And the Hero Will Drown, the urge to write about Quistis and Seifer again just grabbed me by the throat. So then I told myself I'd maybe just dabble in some long-winded standalones so I wouldn't be consumed by another FF VIII novel and, well, lookie here; surprise, surprise, my idea turned into another multi-chaptered, long-winded novel. Oh well. I guess fanfiction is just not ready to give up its hold on me, because I've tried several times throughout the years to stop writing it, and I always end up coming back to it in some way or another. Tequila Princess made me do this-if she hadn't e-mailed me about the ending to And the Hero Will Drown, I probably never would have ventured back into FF VIII territory, so if you hate this, blame her entirely. Also, those of you who read And the Hero Will Drown will already know this, but for those of you who haven't-my writing is pretty dark. I want to delve in-depth into the relationship between Seifer and the sorceress in this one, which was covered in my last fic, but this time I wanted to focus on several longer flashbacks, some of the in-between scenes that you never got to see in the game, and the relationship between them is a very twisted, disturbing one. I'm warning you now: if you are looking for kittens and rainbows, turn back. **

**Chapter One**

Balamb Garden

Trabia

The wind was fucking cold.

It cut through him like the killing blur of sterling mirror surface that was the only weapon that had ever taken him by surprise, holding Squall Leonhart's face captive in its shining length as it cut down and through forehead skin to the bone beneath.

He still thought about that fight sometimes, even in this Hyne-forsaken shithole of a land, where even the ridiculous oven mitt awkwardness of the gloves he wore couldn't keep out the tingling numbness that was the first pins and needles warning sensation of oncoming frostbite.

He supposed it was because he just couldn't seem to shake Pubes these days-the man was always around, issuing orders like he dealt out cold weather gear and the dwindling supply of their ammunition, giving Seifer a look every so often that pushed the hot embers of his rage up from the pit of his stomach and into his throat-it was the same look he kept getting from other cadets, other spineless little faggots too suspicious to trust the ex-traitor but too cowardly to say so.

They could all kiss his goddamn ass. He ripped off both ugly gloves and blew into his cupped hands, glaring out a back-the-fuck-off warning to anyone who passed him, whether they looked like they might bother him or not. His trench coat flapped weakly in the listless breeze, hitting him like a fist in the chest and punching onward, into his heart and his lungs and the twisted, anxious rat's snarl of his bowels.

The woods were too still today.

Even in the dead of night, in the high-piled mountain drifts of snow and the slithering darkness that was the same ugly dusk that came for him in his sleep, he could see movement, life-the brief flick of rabbit ears here and the swish of vanishing deer tail there, and the strident, irritating birdsong that formed the new soundtrack to his life, the one that wasn't the high-pitched whine of flying bullets and the fluid death gurgle of the kid dying next to him.

But now-now there was nothing, and that wasn't quite right.

He stamped both feet, trying to get feeling back into them.

The sky formed a cloudless, faultless blue roof above his head, extending far over the very top spindles of Garden and reminding him of the eyes he kept trying so very hard not to picture-not that there was anything else to do on watch duty, unless he wanted to risk getting caught with his pants around his ankles and some of Chicken Wuss' porn. It was too cold for that anyway, though watching that blonde-haired little fuck frantically tear apart his room looking for the magazines he kept promising Quistis he didn't own would have been immensely entertaining.

His frown creased the scar Squall had given him two years ago.

Garden's ice queen of an instructor was the last person he wanted to be thinking about, and yet here he was, watching his mind play the soundless slide show cinema of the million different poses that made up Quistis Trepe, the ones he had started cataloguing the day Trabia Garden launched the first devastating attack that had turned the last six months of his life into one long, endless military crawl through blood-stained slush and severed hands and the stumps of his comrades' missing limbs, leaking their sprays of dangling arteries like accent pieces in a grisly flower arrangement.

He'd been looking at her when the first missile hit-not with the hero worship adulation of the Trepies sitting in the back of her classroom giggling, just the usual bored indolence he displayed whenever she started in on one of her heinously uninteresting lectures.

She was standing with her pen tucked neatly between her lips-dick sucking ones, he'd always thought, but a couple of lewd suggestions along those lines hadn't gone over well at all, and since he liked his testicles where they were, he'd eventually stopped making them-pointing to something on the screen of her projector-

And then suddenly, just like that, the entire back wall of her classroom vanished, taking her with it.

He hadn't really cared about her, not then, even if listening to her dull speeches sometimes reminded him of a blue-eyed little girl, standing on a beach in front of a lighthouse trying to make him help her build a sandcastle.

That same blue-eyed little bitch had forgotten him by the time he'd arrived at Garden, even though he'd carefully bandaged the skinned knee she'd gotten the day she left, running down the paved driveway to give Matron one last good-bye hug, even though he'd cried himself to sleep after she left, because it meant he was the last now, the unlovable.

Not much had changed there, at least-he just wasn't some fucking pussy who let it bother him anymore.

He hadn't cared about her, that day the sun caught her hair just right through the far window of her classroom, turning blonde to gold and blue to the almost-gray of the storm budding on the flat pewter line of ocean horizon-

And yet…as the other students fled, in the screaming, roiling mob that was mass panic, he ran toward her, toward the ragged fringe of missing wall and the superheated stench of ruined computer and the shattered cherry wood of her desk with its shiny brass nameplate, winking up at him through dust that clotted in his lungs like ash.

He was thinking about a swell of ocean wave, crenellated in the bubbling green carbonation of fast-moving water.

It had swallowed her the same way the dust and debris and falling pieces of projector ate her whole, but he couldn't swim, and Squall, stoic-faced, wordless little Squall, had had to save her instead.

When he dug her out, she was missing her glasses, and bleeding from one nostril.

The steel railing he set his hand on burned like a flame under his fingertips.

"Seifer."

He jerked his head around, scowling. She shouldn't have been able to sneak up on him like that-nice soldier's instincts he had cultivated. "What?"

The smudges of heliotrope shadow beneath both eyes told him she hadn't slept in a very long time. "Squall needs to see us in his office."

"The fuck for?"

Quistis frowned; he could hear her lecture on 'inappropriate language' reverberate through his head, but aloud she said nothing, probably because experience had taught her that berating Seifer's foul mouth was a little like telling Wuss not to be an idiot. "He wants us to set mines around Garden's perimeter." she answered wearily.

So Pubes had noticed the unnatural silence too; Seifer had always assumed he used most of the time spent holed up in his office fondling Rinoa's perky little tits.

"I can do it myself." He made his voice into something harsh and stinging, the trench line of his frown burrowing down deeper-he wanted her to believe he'd rather do it alone-which was partially true-although mostly he was thinking she needed a fucking nap before she swooned into his arms like one of those moron, big-titted clichés in the shitty novels Selphie was always reading.

"He wants us both to do it."

Which meant, of course, that Squall didn't trust him.

It annoyed him that a small part of him was concerned about those livid arks of bruise beneath her eyes. "You look like shit."

Quistis frowned again. He noticed she was shivering, even in her heavy coat, and handed her the gloves he had stripped off several minutes ago. "Here."

She stared down at them in confusion. "What's this?"

"What the hell do you think they are? Fuck, Trepe, get some more sleep."

Her eyebrows came together in the faint scowl she used to give him whenever he was screwing around in the back of her classroom instead of doing his homework. "I mean, why are you giving them to me?"

Seifer shrugged, and turned to look back out over the railing. "I'm not wearing them."

"You should be; you'll notice a marked decrease in your gun blade skills if you lose a couple of fingers to frost bite."

Why did she always have to sound like some kind of damn instruction manual?

"I notice a 'marked decrease' in trying to use the fucking thing at all when I wear them-it's like Chicken Wuss trying to hold his penis."

She just looked at him.

"You know-giant fucking oaf hands, trying to grip a twig?"

"I got it, unfortunately; I just wasn't going to dignify it with a response."

He smiled.

Quistis turned and began walking carefully down the railing and toward the large double doors leading back inside Garden, moving with the arthritic shuffle of an old woman, making Seifer frown again.

She was completely, utterly fucking dead on her feet, and Squall wanted her handling explosives? Chicken Wuss would be a better choice, at this rate.

He gripped Hyperion as he followed her; it was generally his only companion these days-the bitterness at the way Garden treated his return had snapped the anchor line that had been the friendship tethering him to Raijin and Fuujin, and their slow drift division kept going, kept wandering, until he barely saw them anymore. Seifer didn't want to say he regretted it, exactly-he'd heard they were engaged now, living quietly in some backwoods pit of a fishing village and probably a lot happier than they'd been, shackled to his side, dragged right alongside him through the bog of shit his life had become. It wasn't like they'd chosen the fate that bitch had manipulated them into.

But then again, neither had he.

The will that had reached out to cradle his touched it tentatively at first, with a mother's affectionate graze-tender and humane and tolerant and all the things the part of Seifer Almasy that was still boy Seifer, orphan Seifer, needed more than his disciplinarian committee and his fighting prowess and his swaggering, hostile reputation. She'd worn Matron's face and her smell, and when he gave himself to her, when he let that mother's hand smooth his hair and his cheek and his smiling lips, those maternal fingers warped and twisted into the predator talons of the monster that used to come for boy Seifer when he slept.

The strings tightened, jerked, and puppet Seifer performed the fatal ballet of the dance she made him playact with each minute twitch of her mother's fingertips. Each blow and parry and shivering anemone of twitching neck tendons newly severed from his latest victim sprang from those fingertips, and part of him, the part of him that had never really forgotten Matron and the lighthouse and Zell's sandcastles and Quistis' big blue child's eyes, imagined taking them from her, one by one.

They were the same fingers she'd used to take cookies out of the oven for him, and sometimes part of him could remember that while the bitch who'd stolen her face moaned underneath him as he fucked her.

Ahead of him, Quistis opened the door, and he slipped through it after her.

"It's my birthday tomorrow, Instructor." Seifer informed her, shutting the door behind them with his heel, the sudden blast of air from Garden's overwrought heaters flaring his trench coat around him. "Got a birthday kiss for me?"

She didn't respond to that either.

He would be twenty-one, legally entitled now to the pastime he'd taken up with a vengeance his first month back at Garden.

He'd quit three weeks into his bender, because even imbibing enough whiskey to land him in the infirmary with alcohol poisoning hadn't been sufficient to erase his mother's eyes, looking down at him through the layers of dark that were not inky enough to conceal his shame.

Quistis' boots tapped out a hollow rhythm across the floor tiles underfoot; Seifer, walking next to her now, towered the diminutive young woman, he noticed. He thought he might have grown another inch or so in the last year, putting him somewhere around 6' 2" or 3"-his final growth spurt 'fuck you' to new cadet Seifer, smaller than all the other boys in his class and endlessly, hopelessly bitter about it. He hoped so, anyway-another inch and he'd need to duck to get into his fucking dorm room.

He stuck his hand between the closing elevator doors before they shut all the way, and preceded Quistis inside.

That little frown line between her eyebrows was back, creasing the perfect skin there. "Something smells."

"Don't look at me, Trepe. I'm not Chicken Wuss."

"That's not what I meant. It smells like something in the vents. Odd."

He smelled it too, now that she'd mentioned it, and something nagged the back of his mind, something that niggled and squirmed and hung just within his grasp, something that he could tell was important-

And then he realized why he recognized the smell, and threw himself in front of Quistis, snarling. "_Shit_!" He tore off his coat, pressed it to his face, and then clapped his free hand down over her mouth and nose, pinching them shut. With one foot, Seifer lashed out, slamming it heel first into the panel beside the door and praying one of the protrusions his boot glanced off was the button that would take them to the basement level.

The car jerked to a jarring halt, hesitated, and then reversed directions.

She staggered back against mirrored paneling with the sudden force of his lunge, and he fell against her, shuddering the entire car around them.

Seifer ground her back mercilessly into the jointed-together sections of wall behind Quistis, bearing down with all hundred and eighty pounds of lean muscle; she had her hand fisted in his hair when the elevator slid into the oiled notches of its final destination, her narrowed eyes above his white-knuckled fingers letting him know that she was contemplating whether to hit him or not.

He let her go, snatched the coat briefly from his face, and leapt in one long surge of athleticism from the elevator. "Don't breathe the fucking air!"

He could feel the slow leak of new poisoned air through the tattered pores of his coat, weather-beaten and blood-stained and on its final legs, a jagged tear here and another gash there ruining the seal he'd hoped to create-there was a flash fire in his eyes now, pushing the same burning tears he'd tried not to cry the first time she left his bed down his face again, and by the time he finally reached the locked cabinet along the back wall, Seifer could barely see.

He could hear Quistis coughing somewhere behind him.

His elbow hit glass and kept going; he felt splinters of it slash cat claw lesions of new injury down his arm, and the indrawn breath that gave him the oxygen to hiss the curse he couldn't suppress in time brought him to his knees.

He couldn't fucking breathe-someone had shoved their fist down his throat, into his chest and down through the panicked bird flutter of his struggling heart, out the sides and into both seized-up lungs.

Fucking Hyne, he couldn't _breathe_, and inside the inflamed cavity of hell pit his chest had suddenly become, he felt that fist tightening, rotating, taking everything with it as he slid down onto his side, sucking wind like a beached fish-

And then suddenly something was covering his face, something heavy and unwieldy and offering oxygen like a miracle to his lungs-he smashed the mask Quistis had slid down over the top of his head against his face, gasping air the way that bitch had sighed his name through his mother's stolen lips.

Quistis kneeled next to him as his body slowly regulated itself. "What's happening?" Her voice echoed oddly inside the mask she wore.

"That shit is a neurotoxin-I recognized the smell. It was some new weapon Ultimecia was developing-someone must have been able to mass produce it. It shuts your whole body down; you can still see everything going on around you, but all of your muscles seize up and you can't move anything. I watched her test it." He'd been one of those test subjects-it had been some absurd test of his loyalty, a trial to prove just how far that sick whore's precious little 'Knight' was willing to go for her-but he didn't mention that.

"Squall." Quistis breathed, the fatigue gone from her eyes as she uncoiled from her crouch like a striking snake.

* * *

><p>His ponytail sighed out a reptilian whisper where it slid across the collar of his coat.<p>

Huddled into the faux fur of his ridiculous winter jacket-bright orange and a good twenty extra pounds or so of puffy down-and standing just a couple of feet away, Zell huffed out a noisy breath.

It formed an elongated 'o' of smoke signal gray, and floated off.

"Man, this sucks." he said loudly.

"Quiet, Dincht." Irvine hissed.

"There's nothing out here." Zell complained, pushing a lump of snow out of the stamped-down track curve of his pacing trail.

He'd been driving Irvine crazy for the past half hour or so-since approximately two minutes or so into guard duty, and around the same time Zell had decided to open his mouth and forgot to shut it again. Apparently, his friend didn't view silence as a necessary virtue-which, really, he'd already known, although generally that knowledge wasn't accompanied with endless miles of frozen wasteland and Zell as his only companion in a grayed-out world that reminded him of the monochrome nebula that was time compression.

He checked the safety on Exeter again, and sat down on the boulder he'd brushed a pile of snow from just a few minutes ago. It numbed his ass, but the subzero cold sapped his energy, leaving behind just the leaden drag of his half-frozen limbs, and watching Zell shadow box his way through intricate patterns of fictitious battle scenario was exhausting all on its own.

"What do ya' think Selphie's doin' right now?" his friend asked, barely even breathless.

"Man, I ain't talkin' about her right now. Jest zip it, Dincht."

"So she's still mad at you?"

Frowning, Irvine hunkered down into his collar. "I said zip it, man."

"Aww, dude, come on-she can't stay pissed about a little porn on your computer-all guys have that stuff. I got this one with two girls and a cup-"

"La la la! TMI, man."

Zell side kicked air, landed, bounced back on the balls of his feet, and then spun into a whirling dervish of a back fist that crossed Irvine's eyes slightly in an effort to follow it. "She said one of 'em looked just like Quistis, so now she's mad 'cause she thinks I wanna' knock boots with her or somethin.'"

"Do ya'?"

"Do I what?"

"Wanna' doink her?"

"No!"

"Man, I would-if she wasn't like a sister to me, anyway."

Irvine shifted, wincing; a jutting section of boulder was attempting to violate him in a way that brought back nightmarish images of a drunken night in jail and a very large, very amorous fellow inmate. "That's sick."

"What's sick about it?" Zell asked, pulling a couple more jabs and then finally settling into a jittery sort of stillness that Irvine knew from experience wouldn't last very long. "Quisty's hot."

"Yeah, man, but you jest said she was like a sister to you."

"Well, I didn't say I _would _do it with her-just if she wasn't like family to me, ya' know?"

Irvine shook his head, his ponytail swishing audibly across the worn leather of his coat back. "You're twisted, dude."

"So how long do you think it's gonna' be before she forgives you?"

"Dunno." He let his shoulders rise and fall in a shrug that was far more lackadaisical than the brewing tempest knot of anxiety in the pit of his gut. Selphie could hold a grudge for an awfully long time-he could expect at least a week of crippling disappointment for certain parts of his anatomy, probably longer. Unless he got her flowers, maybe-the good ones you couldn't really find in Trabia, because everything in this arctic hellhole was either speckled in the black rot of frostbite, or the thorny, ugly species of local weed that was the only thing that really flourished here.

Having them shipped in from one of Balamb's conservatories was going to be really expensive.

"What do ya' think Quisty's like in bed, anyway? She's all prim and proper on the outside, you know? I bet she's into some really weird stuff. Like…donkey shows. Or cross-dressing, but, like, for the dude-like she makes him wear her panties and stuff."

"Dincht, you're a screwed up little man."

"Well, she's got that whip."

"Yeah-that she uses to _kill _people." It was getting hard to suppress his laughter-he kept picturing what Quistis' face might look like if she were ever privy to this particular conversation, but he tamped down on it, and the unmanly giggle Selphie always teased him about broke like a bubble in his chest. Laughing at Zell usually just encouraged him, and he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to wander down a road that ended in some hapless man caught in Instructor Trepe's web, wearing frilly women's underwear and barking like a dog or something.

Dammit, now he was picturing that.

"Man, I gotta' whiz." Zell announced.

"So go."

"You want me to just pull it out in front of you? That's a violation of man code-it's like forgetting to leave a urinal between you and the next guy. Some dude did that to me the other day, actually-I swear to Hyne, he was like crowding right up on me, and I'm holding my doodle and trying to ignore him, right? But I swear he was lookin' at it, so then I got nervous and couldn't finish, and I had to go so bad that I think I pissed myself a little while I was running down the hall trying to get to those bathrooms across from the infirmary in time."

It took Irvine a moment to formulate a response to that. "Don't call your thing a 'doodle,' man."

"Well, I heard girls don't like it when you call it crude stuff-dick and cock or Mr. Rocketman and stuff."

"Well, they ain't gonna' like it if you go around referring to it as a 'doodle,' either."

"What's wrong with that?"

"I dunno-it just sounds weird. Like a kid's toy or somethin'. You don't want 'em thinking about it like that-that's just messed up."

"Yeah, I was kinda' thinkin' Mr. Rocketman sounded a lot better."

Irvine flipped his collar up to hide his smile. "Yeah, man, whatever you think works."

Zell walked past his boulder whistling, slipping his hands into both pockets, the ground crunching underneath him in gunshot cracks of yielding snow bank, glazed in a thin crust layer of slippery ice. He skidded and almost fell, and Irvine shook his head as he watched him make his way off into some bushes for a bit of privacy-he'd just watched the man spend his last thirty minutes pulling complex martial arts maneuvers like it was nothing, and yet somehow the straightforward effort of walking was almost too much for his fine motor skills.

He checked Exeter again and sighed, thinking about Selphie. Women were so hard to understand sometimes-sneak a couple of dirty downloads, and they'd turn a blonde bun and some glasses into some deep-seated desire to screw one of their closest friends.

A sudden explosive rustle from the direction Zell had disappeared snapped his head up and around. "Dincht."

The rustling kept going, getting more violent, and he stretched his long legs out in front of him, working out the kinks before getting to his feet. "Dincht. What the hell are you doin'?" With Exeter hanging at his side, Irvine made his way cautiously down the path Zell had worn through the endless stratums of white that made up their surroundings, the spider leg prickling of honed soldier instinct suddenly flinching the skin of his neck into the warning ripple of approaching danger.

He swung his rifle up as something exploded out of the bushes at him; dumb luck timed the blow just right, and the barrel cracked the stranger facing him down across the jaw, sending him staggering away off-balance.

Irvine saw something flash in his hand, and got a hand on the lapel of the stranger's coat before he could complete the lunge that would bury the knife he gripped between Irvine's ribs; he yanked, shifting his footing and using the momentum the slick ground gave him to bring his elbow up and around as he pivoted, bashing the man across the mouth and then the nose, finishing the struggle for good-and then his foot slipped out completely from beneath him, and he went down with that fistful of damp material still clenched in his fingers, Exeter flying out of his other hand.

Zell emerged from the bushes, red-faced and angry-looking.

He had the man in a two-handed death hold before Irvine had time to scramble back toward his gun, and the head butt he swung into the man's face landed like a wrecking ball, breaking his nose a second time.

His knife flashed like a star; Irvine saw it slide toward Zell's heart, through the first outer seam of his coat and into the flesh beneath, and then the deadweight uselessness of his clumsy, frozen fingers found Exeter, and he leveled it in a one-handed grip that ripped off the top half of the man's skull and painted the snow behind him in the vivid silvery red backsplash of his brain matter.

He scrambled over the body to Zell, pale-faced and hunched over with both hands pressed to his stomach.

"Let me see!" Irvine yelled when Zell's shaking fingers got in the way, ripping them aside and tearing off his coat, ready to plug the hole that would probably be fatal this far from Garden, dripping life onto the snow beneath them-

And then he realized Zell wasn't bleeding after all, and his hands sagged to his lap in relief.

"Man, am I glad I wore this thing! He still had a couple a' layers to get through."

"Shit, Dincht, you scared me!" Irvine snapped.

Zell ignored that and climbed to his feet, toeing the body over all the way onto its back-he'd spun when he landed, flopping halfway on his side with the remaining half of his face covered by the curtain fall of hair that had untwisted itself from the bun he'd been wearing when Irvine shot him.

Standing silently over his handiwork, Irvine realized suddenly that he'd just killed a woman, and his stomach turned over. With her hair up like that, the angular lines of her face all blended together into the androgynous mediocrity of a slightly pretty boy-but now, with the fabric of her uniform stretched tight over the front of her chest, he could see the telltale mound of the small breasts underneath.

He'd killed women before, of course-all three Gardens trained at least as many women as men, and those that didn't make SeeD generally went on to high level military careers and more than a few prematurely-ended battlefield stints, some courtesy of his own hand during the war. Yet somehow, he always pictured Selphie superimposed across faces that generally looked nothing like her-those shining eyes and perky flip of a hairdo and the smiling lips he was somehow privileged enough to kiss, and part of him quietly acknowledged that one day, that glass-eyed face leaking blood like spit from lips the color of old corpse might actually be hers.

One day, some other man might stand like this over the woman Irvine loved, his cooling weapon dripping smoke like her forehead seeped blood, and then he didn't know what the hell he was going to do.

Die, maybe. The thought hurt that much, enough to punch a ragged hole the size of the opening he'd blown apart this woman's head with right through the center of his heart.

"I think it's time to call Squall." Zell said quietly, in an oddly subdued voice that didn't sound right at all.

* * *

><p>They hit Squall's office at a dead sprint.<p>

Seifer already had Hyperion out, slung over his shoulder and sloughing overhead light like points of far-off starlight from the deadly knife edge of its tip when he kicked open the door.

The throat-cut bodies of two cadets blocked his path, and he kicked them out of the way. He saw motion out of the corner of his eye, something shifting near the out-cold slouch of Squall Leonhart's body, slumped down onto his folded arms like he was just taking a nap-

And he lunged, pirouetting like a dancer, cutting through the subcutaneous under layer of muscle that took him straight through to the bone, where Hyperion jammed, stuck tight.

He had the screaming would-be assassin by the throat before they'd even fully realized he'd just cut off half their arm, his fingers forming the same garrote the sorceress' will had wrapped around the self-control that in the end had not been nearly as powerful as he'd convinced himself it was.

If anyone was going to kill this pretentious, emotionless fuck of a robot, it was him.

Her neck came apart like wet paper in his hands, and Seifer let Squall's attacker crumple at his feet, the nerve severed halves of her ruined arm fluttering like the celebratory crepe paper banners he would not be getting tomorrow.

When he turned to face Quistis, he could just barely make out the semicircle curve that was all he could see of the frown line he knew was back underneath the featureless anonymity of her mask.

The ominous hiss of her breath in the new silence hooked the knots of his vertebrae like reaper's claws, and dragged down his spine.

He watched her gently check Squall, and realized that fist was back, squeezing his tangled up guts this time.

"How long will he be like this?"

"Until he stops breathing it." He assumed, anyway-Ultimecia had pulled him out before the gas had entirely run its course, fussing over him like a mother whose child has just skinned its knee, like it wasn't her own fucking fault he'd been in there in the first place-

He blinked, and realized Quistis was staring at him.

Not at him-past him. He pivoted on a boot heel to follow her line of sight, over the motionless hump of Squall's left shoulder and out the giant curve of wood-bordered window behind him to the horizon line that was just starting to go dark, splotching the snowy hill tops in patches of bruised purple.

It was lined with SeeDs dressed in the bland gray-trimmed white of Trabia Garden, and they were marching on B. Garden.

"Fuck me."

* * *

><p>Zell was trying to keep up with Irvine's long-legged sprint when he saw them.<p>

They were only just visible, so seen because the sun had begun to vanish from its sky of wintry cinereal, spreading dark like a cloak and back shadowing their pale uniforms.

"Oh _shit_."

Ahead of him, Irvine had Exeter unslung and ready, loaded on the run with the sort of from-birth ease he always handled firearms with; Zell could hear him beginning to pant in the thin air, but he kept going, kept pushing, and he resigned himself to the fact that he was probably going to break an ankle trying to keep up.

When they'd tried to contact Squall by radio and raised nothing but static, both men had begun to battle the soldier's preternatural gut sense for some oncoming calamity; Irvine had suggested they hike down a little, just to make sure they weren't out of range, and when that failed as well, they began the long trek back to Garden, Zell's hands balled like his heart, wedged like a block of ice in his throat.

Irvine dropped to one knee in front of him; Zell almost tripped over him, and his last second sidestep nearly put him on his face when one of his feet skidded out from underneath him.

"Keep going!" his friend ordered him.

"What are you doing?"

"I can make the shot from here; I can pick some of them off before they get in close-get to Garden and make sure Squall knows what's going on."

"No way! Dude, you're gonna' get _killed_!"

"Dincht!" Irvine snapped, brushing loose strands of undone ponytail from eyes the same color as the pieces of sky still garbed in daytime gray. "I ain't gonna' let 'em get that close-go!"

He hesitated, feeling that block of ice in his throat sharpen to a point like a dagger, turning hot, splintering into molten needles that stabbed him through the heart.

And then Exeter boomed; his ears rang, and he listened to brass ping off glaciated snow in the same moment his eyes watched one of them drop.

There were still too many of them, row after row behind the next, miniature white dots of an advancing death that could roll right over the top of his friend and keep going, leaving his picked-over skeleton behind like trash.

"_Go_!" Irvine fired again.

Zell hesitated a moment longer, watched another exactly placed round bring another SeeD to his knees, somersaulting down the hill they crested and flopping limply into the hollow beneath it, watched Irvine cycle another round, watched the boulder steadiness of that finger squeeze again, fire again and then-

He turned, and ran.

* * *

><p>"Start opening windows-get some fucking air moving through here. We need all this shit out of here." He stepped around Squall to the window behind him, searching for the latch.<p>

He saw Quistis shake her head out of the corner of his eye. "It doesn't open-it's just ornamental."

Seifer slid his arms around Squall's waist, and lifted, staggering under the flaccid deadweight of Garden's commander, dumping him unceremoniously off to one side and picking up the chair he'd formerly occupied.

His first swing drew spider webs of stress line fracture through solid window plating; the second blew out the front half of the entire thing, taking the chair with it, and he let it fall a long, long way, wind like teeth gripping him through the new opening.

"Go check some of the upper levels; they probably just hit the places they thought were important-the first level and Pubes' office." Hopefully, or they were fucked.

"What are you going to do?" Quistis demanded.

He crouched beside his newest victim, pulling Hyperion free with a raw meat squelch that reminded him of Edea, pushing Fira into the gape of open wound Squall had given him when he overextended a strike and didn't pull back in time, using that fray of damaged skin and muscle tissue as the focal point for the flames he screamed beneath, because for one faint, faint split second of a moment, he had dared to remember that he was Seifer Almasy, and no one fucking ordered him around.

He had it across his shoulder when he turned without a word, back toward the door they'd burst through, and beneath his mask, he smiled like a wolf.

* * *

><p>Battle is not really a skill, but an art form.<p>

Each swing of the blade and high-arcing flare of the bullet is a master's brushstroke-each palm strike and ankle sweep and whiplash crack of the elbow the random chaos splatter of abstract masterpiece, and this-

This is how Seifer Almasy makes war:

His feet spell out the pattern of his dance before it has even begun-from the first anticipatory quiver of his fighter's muscles to the ending stroke of his final blow, guillotine precise and flinging red like the finishing touch to the saturated canvas that is the battleground beneath his boots.

When he dodges, it is casual, just a nonchalant shoulder twitch, because most blows do not even come close to touching him.

And when he leaps, his coat flares out behind him like tattered wings, and when he lands, rolls, and comes up killing, his snarl is stained red like a serial killer's.

He is not the hero of the story when he fights, and neither is the long-haired cowboy fighting by his side, one of the good guys, the _right side _that he can never just seem to grope his way back to.

Because the failing heart he runs through with the fatal point of his gun blade belongs to someone's brother, and the last gasp sigh of saber-cut trachea is the final oration of a father. The graceful up slice he uses to split ribcage and double cut lung sac and cleave heart muscle murders someone's son, and then their daughter.

And beside him, Irvine's rifle flares death like it spits smoke, and those fathers and sons and brothers create the dividing line between them that begins to blur in the anarchy of shit smell and blood taste and wheezing death cry that is war.

This is how Seifer Almasy makes war, and it is why she wanted him in the first place.

* * *

><p>The blue and silver glare that was B. Garden reinforcements rolled over Trabia Garden's invading force like a wave, forming a wedge that hammered back the ocean wall of gray-white that hung like a tsunami poised overhead, threatening to crush him and Seifer at any moment.<p>

Garden's most notorious traitor did not seem to particularly care; Irvine watched him backslash and sidestep and riposte like he could do it in his sleep, smashing aside this blade here and that gun muzzle there, turning and turning again, making each pivot into another, stringing them all together into the flashing death chain that was one elongated moment of never-ending attack.

He fell back to load, his hair getting in the way.

"Kinneas!" Seifer snapped, and decapitated the white-clad soldier drawing a bead on him at point blank range from behind; he felt spray from the man's death ruin his coat, and then Exeter was ready again, and he finished the next one himself.

His gun thundered like the roar of a pissed-off dragon; beneath his feet, slush formed white-capped peaks like incoming surf, stomped flat and then spiked upward again, oil slick greasy with the mingled blood and vomit of the new patina taking over formerly pristine white.

He was back to back with Seifer before he even realized he'd moved to take up that particular defensive position, firing and then ducking, synchronizing his attacks with Seifer's defenses, sweating beneath his coat and his hat and the fine mist layer of fog lowering itself like the sun, just faintly visible now beyond the sliver of hilltop they had poured over.

They weren't going to win; he didn't know what the hell had happened to Garden, but the SeeDs that came to their aid were pitifully few, and he could see less and less as he spun underneath Seifer's outstretched arm with Exeter extended, his forearm vibrating beneath the force of its explosion.

He could see Zell, smashing bone and ripping tendon and back kicking knee cap, a blur of ridiculous orange among the muted drabness of everyone else, and the knife twisting in his belly stuck him through the chest-if that little shit got himself killed-

Seifer pressed forward, carving patterns of open space into body-jammed pandemonium.

Irvine followed, still back to back with a man he usually considered only slightly more bearable than something he might scrape off the bottom of his shoe, almost pathetically grateful for that whirling blur of lethal silver reflecting jawless skeleton face and crushed eye socket and swinging artery rope back at him.

At the very top of Garden, Irvine saw something flare, some final sun flash of fading daylight glancing off metal.

Somehow, Seifer had gotten hold of a grenade; he pulled the pin with his teeth, chucked it, and then flicked his blade upward in one smooth line of death like he'd never interrupted the flow in the first place.

To their right, the grenade detonated, and Irvine saw a ripped-apart hand fly through the air.

He realized what Seifer was heading for when he saw the thin silver threading of an access ladder standing out against the brightly-painted bubble of Garden's side, still mostly obscured through the carnage they waded into, the striking reptile of that gun blade still flicking out here and there with the deftness of forked lightning.

A few stories up, reachable by the ladder Seifer was struggling toward, B. Garden had a double-barreled machine gun mounted permanently to the platform beneath it, belt fed and unmanned, with a rate of fire that would rain over a thousand rounds per minute down on their enemy, and grant them the edge they desperately needed.

"Dincht!" he shrieked over the artillery roar of clashing blades and thundering guns and shrieking wounded. He saw Zell's head come up and around, saw him cartwheel over a man's huddled body, his back the springboard for Zell's ungloved hands, and hit the ground running.

Above them, on the flattened-out section of watch tower sloping down away from Garden's tallest spire, Irvine thought he saw movement.

And then light fountained from the top like commemorative fireworks, jetting outward in tentacles of brilliant white that turned into the slivers of falling stars.

When they hit the ground they snapped, and flared out in soap bubbles of iridescent rainbow; Irvine watched one envelope Zell, and realized what the movement he saw up top had been.

Rinoa.

* * *

><p>Quistis supported Rinoa as she worked, paler than the arc of pastel knuckle she could see where it just edged out around the curve of her friend's waist.<p>

She had spared just ten long minutes that turned into an eon of thundering heartbeat and acid vomit taste and knotted stomach cramps-her _friends _were out there-throwing open as many windows as she could and sprinting along body-littered hallways in search of functional soldiers. She'd found a sparse force up on the last few levels where the neurotoxin that left Squall paralyzed helplessly at his desk hadn't reached, and roused them from lackadaisical stupor with the uncharacteristic bark of a drill instructor.

And then she'd gone in search of Rinoa, who was probably their only hope now.

She was not a solider-not even close, but she could create and maintain enough individual shields that it just might, perhaps, give them a fighting chance.

But she wasn't counting on it, and Quistis realized she would probably die today.

As a SeeD, death was always a lurking possibility, waiting around the next bend, or perhaps the one after that-a stray bullet or knife slash or artillery shell that took both legs off at the knee, leaving just the spurting stumps of fatal blood flow that could not be staunched in time.

But she had never really _thought _about it, not in depth.

Not whether the tangled cord of your guts felt like the dry scale slide of snake skin, and not whether she'd get to watch the two halves of Irvine's face peel themselves apart around the blade bisecting them before its next upward slash ended her as well.

She could see the glinting steel curve of one of the smooth-sanded support beams curving around the globe of Garden, dropping away with the abruptness of a cliff edge.

Below that, far below, was the same platform she could not see Zell, Seifer and Irvine fighting their way toward.

Slowly, Quistis eased Rinoa to her knees, where the sorceress huddled gratefully, looking sick-the gas had taken her as well while she napped in her bed, and she was barely conscious when Quistis dragged her out onto the platform where they stood now, the jointed-together steel plates shifting like tectonic fault lines under their feet with each distant boom that rocked the world.

She left Rinoa behind, and stepped to the edge of Garden, the edge of the world; beyond her feet there was just an empty galaxy of space now, and a long way underneath that, the gray smudge of her destination, barely visible.

The in breath she took to steady herself tasted like smoke and snow and death.

She held herself poised on that narrow ledge of steel for just a moment, watching the orange flower bud of muzzle flares and the in and out flicker and star flare of twirling blades, slender as needles from her vantage point, and then she jumped.

* * *

><p>Fuck, that was a woman, Seifer thought.<p>

She rode that curve line of five hundred foot steel like a child's playground slide, using her feet and hands to brake, just enough that when she reached the platform he was trying to get to, she could snag one of the cables that suspended it with her hand, and arc her weight out over the railing in a pendulum swing that carried her across the drop that would kill her, into a landing that was almost graceful in front of the gun.

He leapt, grabbed ahold of steel rung that cold scorched his naked fingers, and hung like that, fighting one-handed, using his new height advantage to unchain skulls and front kick jaws, Irvine and Zell working together beneath him like the well-oiled team they were.

Chicken Wuss wasn't bad. He had an uppercut like a sledgehammer, and when he side kicked one of the T. Garden fucks trying to cut off Irvine's head, he turned it into one long flowing combo that smashed the man's face against the side of Garden.

The smear of blood he left behind streaked lurid red across flaking blue paint, and Seifer could see the shiny white seeds of snapped off teeth decorating it here and there.

"Wuss!" he hollered. "Get the fucking cowboy over here!" Irvine was a lot less use in close combat than he could be up on that platform next to Quistis, picking off the soldiers her cover fire left behind.

He swung out, pushing off the ladder behind him and using the head of a T. Garden SeeD to break his fall; he broke the fucker's neck when he landed, and rolled as he hit the ground, coming neatly into a crouch that he extended out of with the deadly finger of Hyperion, gutting another soldier.

He heard the clank of Irvine hitting the ladder above him, and then the turbo hammer boom of Quistis opening fire.

He held the base of the ladder with Zell, pivoting around the other man's shorter frame, Hyperion a livid streak of unending blur, ducking Zell's high-reaching flip like they'd been doing it all their lives, like this was just one long sequence in a play they had rehearsed a thousand times.

Quistis' initial volley took out most of the right flank of T. Garden's army, and then they seemed to realize what was happening, and Zell suddenly went down under a surge of bodies rushing the ladder; they slammed Seifer against the side of Garden, splitting his lip, and he lost his grip on Hyperion.

"_Fuck_."

The blood he could taste ran down his chin; he reached out with one hand, grabbed the flailing ankle of a SeeD who'd managed to mount the ladder, and yanked.

The man caught his arm as he came down, and hung by the grisly protrusion of his socket popped shoulder, screaming.

Seifer jerked at him again, not caring if he took his whole fucking arm off.

He still couldn't see fucking Chicken Wuss; if he'd been stomped to fucking death under the mob, that too-pretty cowboy who was probably his lover was going to kill him.

He saw a flash of mud-splattered gold, and dove for it.

He came up with a sputtering Zell in one hand, and some fucker's neck in the other.

Seifer let go of Zell, got his arm around the throat of the man he still had in a death grip, and twisted violently; the man kicked once like a gut shot animal, and then went motionless.

Zell had Hyperion in his hand when he turned around; he planted it blade first and used it as a fulcrum to kick off, penetrating a double layer of overcoat down into the sternum below, putting the man on his back and then handing Seifer's gun blade over.

Seifer dodged the backswing of his left fist hammer, spun beneath his arm, and came up with an assault like a battering ram, taking shiny rope coils of intestine with him when he pulled Hyperion back.

* * *

><p>He was starting to run out of ammo.<p>

It wouldn't have mattered if these were ordinary soldiers, just commonplace cannon fodder sent on ahead to make up the brunt of first wave casualty; they could only come at him one at a time from the narrow confines of that swaying latticework of metal, and he picked them off one by one, braced against the wind that had started to pick up and firing one-handed, his other gripping platform railing like shipwreck victim holding scattered flotsam.

But these were SeeDs, and when Exeter clicked on empty, the soldier hanging below just out of Irvine's line of fire heaved himself over the side, flung himself sideways to avoid the vicious kick aimed at his head, and came to his feet armed.

He'd forgotten about Quistis.

She swiveled platform-welded turret gun, and unlaced the front of his chest with the neat stitch work suture line of the bullets that shredded him apart at close range. His chest came open like poorly-sewn rag doll, and he staggered backward against the railing Irvine still gripped; it vibrated like hammer struck blacksmith anvil, and then he flipped over it, and fell a long way.

There were two for him to deal with now, and one of them had a gun; Irvine swung for him first, using the butt of Exeter to break his jaw, turning the uppercut into a cross face blow that split his cheek down to the bone; it smiled open at him in a bloody clown's grimace, and then his head disappeared in a crimson mist of disintegrated skullcap.

Around him, the wind shrieked and surged and tore; he lost his hat to it, and the hair that blew free from underneath it stung his eyes.

A bullet sparked off the metal underneath him, throwing up steel shavings like grenade blown shrapnel.

"Sniper!" Quistis yelled, dropping down behind the minimal cover provided by the swiveling head of the turret she manned.

He yanked the SeeD he was fighting in front of him like a shield; the man twitched like an epileptic and vomited blood down the front of Irvine's shirt, and with a violent push, Irvine shoved him back out over the side.

His heart thundered like ocean surf in his ears.

They had to get off this damn platform-Quistis had snagged the only possible shelter, and that was negligible at best; they were both dead if they didn't get back to ground level, right away.

He pulled the small utility knife he kept clipped to his belt, spun, and neat cut one of the cable lines holding the platform upright; it sank in half an inch and stopped, the braid of married-together climber's rope unharmed.

Another shot whined overhead, bursting with a shrill whistle of broken sound barrier somewhere behind him; he turned his head to check on Quistis as he threw himself flat, Exeter sliding out of his fingers and shooting out over the edge.

She was bleeding from one temple, not seriously, but with the profuseness typical of a head wound. She had one slender white hand pressed to it, those blue eyes behind their circles of glass wide with the knowledge of oncoming death that loosened his guts into a shivering pile of liquid terror, and when he tried to slither belly-first across the square of cold, cold steel between them, another bullet threw up dots of white hot flame.

Shit. _Shit!_

He was going to die with Selphie mad at him, and he held onto her sparkling eyes and smiling lips and the cheerful flick of her hairdo as long as he could, until the bullet that chewed through his spine and exited out his mouth stopped his heart and his lungs and his brain for good, taking with it all his memories of her-

But the bullet didn't come, didn't rat gnaw the fatal inch wide exit wound of ended military career that he expected-

Light fell like a rain drop, flared out, and imprisoned them both in the translucent dome of Protect; the bullet glanced off that instead, throwing up more bright embers and shrieking like a banshee along the side of Garden.

The dome cracked like glass, and split along the top.

* * *

><p>Returning motor control was just a minute finger twitch at first, starting in one hand and then flaring out down the length of his forearm, semi-second, eye blink quick. The dead meat paralysis of his useless body tried to shiver in the sheet of arctic air that roiled and crawled over it, describing figure eight curves of frost in the patches of sweat beneath his coat-and couldn't.<p>

Outside, he could hear his friends dying.

His friends and his responsibilities and the first year cadets he was supposed to keep safe, the ones that had entered Garden with romantic hero dreams shining like stars in their eyes.

They were down there now, shitting themselves as they died, crying blood like tears from throats and open lipped stomach wounds and vacant eye sockets, while he just _lay _here, trying to remember how to move his goddamned arm again.

He could roll his eye back just far enough to see the curve of Lionheart's shining hilt, just three inches shy of the unmoving fingers of his right hand, and frustrated warmth burned his tear ducts.

He could do that. He couldn't move his legs or his arms or anything that would be of any use whatsoever, but he could lie here, helpless, and cry.

The self hatred that lit up the raging furnace his chest had become spread through the rest of him, and now, just like his limbs, Squall couldn't feel the wind cutting into his back anymore.

He tried to close his eyes, and couldn't do that either.

Oddly enough, he was thinking about Seifer.

Not the last stand drama of the battle they had leapt and sliced and jaw punched their way through atop that elaborate, too-extravagant ode to Ultimecia's ego, parade floats and jester's hats and bright burning lights lending an eerie festivity to the moment, and not the mirror curve of Hyperion sketching a line of fire up the arch of his forehead.

He was thinking about the first time he had fought Seifer, surrounded by a dozen other paired-off fourteen-year-olds but locked into a world all their own.

When they'd crossed blades, his arms buckled under the strength of the first blow he just barely caught and turned aside in time, and he realized with a teenage boy's easily wounded pride that he was probably going to lose.

But now, now-

He pictured that punishing brute force and hurricane swirl of gray trench coat and silver blade line and red-stitched fire cross down there on the battleground next to his friends, fighting on their side this time, and the fist clench hold fear had on his heart unwound, just a little. If he could just keep them alive long enough-if he could just keep them _safe _until Squall could function again, until he could join that screaming fray of dancing blades and smoke belching gun snouts and streaming blood and headless, untrained children-

And suddenly, he realized his left hand had jerked. Once, twice, and then again, and now he could feel the thin dew of sweat that broke out across his forehead scar as he tried to do it on his own.

Slowly, slowly-

He could, bending each finger one at a time, needles of sensation puncturing his palm and then his arm.

He peeled himself one piece at a time off the floor-first his hand and then the wrist and finally the arm attached to it, and suddenly he could get his feet underneath him again.

He staggered on newborn foal legs, catching himself on the edge of his desk, using it as a pivot point to turn him toward the window, the ledge cracking like the gunshots fracturing SeeD skull far below him. Jagged window hole ripped his hands like predator teeth, but he didn't give a shit, because he was _standing_-he had Lionheart in his hand, and if he timed the arc of his leap just right, he could hit flat rooftop just a few feet below him-he could be down there in a minute, in _seconds _maybe, and then he would not have to rely on Seifer Almasy anymore-

Squall's knees shuddered, folded, and he went down still gripping serrated window frame like it could save him, like it could make his stupid, _worthless _legs work again-

And now that frustrated scalding liquid was back, blistering his eyelids like he'd tried not to let it do in Time Compression, turning and turning again while around him there was just gunmetal vapor, forever, because he couldn't find her anymore, and beneath him his feet puppet twitched, scrabbled, and slid apart, putting him on his knees.

His teeth came together in the same grimace he'd worn as he charged Seifer, Lionheart dragging at his arm like thousand pound wrist shackles, rearing back over his head while that arrogant blonde _shit _laughed at him.

Rinoa's scream reached for him through the window as his bleeding hands pulled Squall back upright.

* * *

><p>The fissures of critical damage through the stressed shell of Protect opened wider; Irvine had Quistis by the arm as the whole thing flexed above their heads, the flyaway strands of his hair wrapping them both like thin cape shreds.<p>

He didn't know why the hell he'd slipped his hand around her elbow in this sweaty death grip-there wasn't a damn thing he could do about the slow unravel of Rinoa's dying spell coming apart over their heads, not for himself, and certainly not for his friend, tight-wound and colorless in the rigid clench of his hands.

The next bullet would blow apart her pretty little hands as they instinctively shielded vital organs, shearing finger bone and unsecured ribbons of blonde, dipped in red like paint as they fluttered out away from her falling body.

Another round hit and skidded off, undoing the entire top and leaking cracks down the side.

* * *

><p>Seifer could see the sniper from where he spun and lunged and stabbed, spraying death all around him.<p>

Forced back from the ladder where he and Zell had made their stand, he could make out the giveaway flash of gun muzzle on the apex of hill top Trabia had charged down, highlighting for just one split second moment the figure behind it.

High up on the platform, the spell encasing Quistis and Irvine shivered ominously, giving a jell-o quiver of last stand perseverance before it finally burned up around them in the nuclear glow of space re-entry.

Seifer up cut hard, sliding Hyperion through the notch of under jaw that was the only remaining obstacle between him and that sun flare of deadly snout, tearing the man's face in half. He twisted as the man fell, his nimble wrist flick taking off nose and the up-tilted corner of skeleton grin showing through, freeing his gun blade.

He brought Hyperion around to bear as the man re-settled rifle to shoulder.

When he fired, the top of Garden flared in one last end of the world blaze, whiting out the night behind him.

* * *

><p>Where her light fell now, it rained death.<p>

Squall hit the rooftop three feet down, stumbled, and came up running.

That scream moved him like nothing else could, shooting life back through his dead limbs, and he made his way down the side of Garden like that-skidding and sliding and staggering through near-falls, the burned-down ash of his heart tangling around the faulty bellows of his lungs.

Rinoa-oh Hyne, Rinoa-

He couldn't live without her. There wasn't any way to go on in a world that didn't have her pretty doe eyes and smiling lips and that delicate, slender little finger, the one that reached up to touch his mouth when she didn't want him to say anything at all-

He tripped and went flying, turning it into a clumsy shoulder roll, gaining his feet again with it burning like he'd been shot.

It took him an eternity to reach the maintenance ladder that would take him all the way to ground level, an eon where she might be dying below, panting out the ragged animal gasps of her last breaths, calling his name because he had _promised _her he would come-he would always come-

Oh Hyne, please, Hyne, _Hyne_-

Squall got a hand around the ladder and gripped it one-handed like that, slanting Lionheart off to one side, putting his feet to either side of the rungs so he could plummet straight down, breakneck fast and yet not fast enough.

His boots hit the ground with a thud that threw blood and slush and shit mud, and he skidded in it.

A T. Garden SeeD charged him with the ululating scream of his battle cry, and Lionheart ripped out his throat.

* * *

><p>Rinoa's magic tumbled down in chandelier strands of mortality; where each beaded-together chain of glowing illumination hit, it killed, and around Seifer, the churned-up battleground that was the rolling ice hills of Trabia turned into a cesspit of endless burning death.<p>

He stayed long enough to watch his bullet find his mark, long enough to watch that fucker drop, and stay down, and then he ran.

He had Zell in his free hand as Hyperion whirled a long killing circle around them, sprinting back toward Garden, following the rolling wave of fleeing blue and silver that picked the two of them up, and carried them along on the motion of its unstoppable riptide.

And then he remembered that Quistis was still up on that platform underneath the main burst, and something inside him, something he didn't want to understand, made him try to turn around.

He couldn't.

Somewhere in that relentless surge, he lost his grip on Zell.

Hyperion came loose in his hand, and he snapped his bare fingers down tight around it, elbowing indiscriminately now, forcing his way out of the center of that teeming ocean, back the way he'd come.

T. Garden was retreating; he could see them making for that same hill, pouring in an arrow line of fleeing white over its peak, silhouetted in the last thin strip of light the dying sun was just barely hanging onto.

He nearly crashed into Squall, sprinting like an automaton, like a man possessed, toward the same section of Garden he aimed his adrenaline shot legs at, the metallic aftertaste that burned on his tongue almost enough to make him forget the trembling exhaustion in his arms and the cut on his jaw and his swelling, stinging lip.

But not quite, and it wasn't enough to make him forget that she might be dead.

Why the fuck did he care?

He didn't, he told himself-he _didn't_.

He didn't care if that queer-faced cowboy had a smoking crater hole of just a few left behind stumps of vein where his head used to be, and he didn't care if she was lying beside him, bleeding from her nose again and looking vulnerable without those Instructor's spectacles that were as much a part of her as that fucking teacher look.

But he picked up speed anyway, hurtling bodies and the dimpled graves of spent brass, cycling more and more of the exhausted reserves of his energy into the churning pistons he made of his legs.

* * *

><p>Just four feet from the ground, her fatigue won, and Quistis slipped.<p>

She resigned herself to a messy heap in mud that stank of death-loosened bowels and up-chucked lunch meat and artery-cut blood.

A pair of arms caught her, and the man attached to them went down with a grunt, his knees skidding out from under him in the amalgamation of new spilled gore and glutinous brain matter that was the ground now.

She could see the Frankenstein pucker of old scar tissue through blonde hair, and realized she was cradled in Seifer Almasy's shaking arms like a child.

It took her a moment to unglue her tongue from the roof of the mouth. "Put me down." Quistis ordered, in a voice that was much more imperious-sounding than she had planned.

He dropped her with a scowl, and she splattered mud in his face when she landed.

For a moment, she just lay there, the night sky tilting slowly overhead, sliding like the world kept trying to do, out from underneath Quistis and the quivering lump of exhaustion that was her entire body. When she tried to sit up, headache flared like a direct hammer blow to the temple, and she almost vomited all over his boots.

He stabbed Hyperion into the ground between them and crouched in front of it, that shining streak of quicksilver dividing his face into two separate halves the way he had done to that girl's arm, a long-lashed green eye blinking down at her from either side.

Oh, _Hyne_-Rinoa.

She struggled back upright again, and Seifer tipped her back with two fingers to the forehead, pushing her over like she was just a toddler, just a willful, disobedient _child_, and she knew by his infuriating smirk that he'd done it to make her mad.

It was the same smile he flashed from the back of her classroom, with his boots up on his desk and his hands behind his head, surveying the pushed-together desks and glowing console screens like he owned them.

"Rinoa-"

"Squall's got her."

She sighed, and just like that, the anger was gone-there wasn't any room for it in her chest anymore, strangled beneath the titanic burden of the weariness that slowly drowned her.

Quistis shut her eyes.

Hyne, she was tired.

"Hey!" he barked, and she pulled her eyes open again, just slightly.

Through the attenuate curve of half slit she made them into, Quistis could see his blurry face hovering over her, frowning severely.

It made his scar wrinkle, and suddenly, she could remember another time he had looked just like that, in the lurid carnival glow that was not brighter than his eyes.

"Your head's bleeding, so no fucking nap for you right now, Instructor."

She put a hand to her temple, and brought it away coated in the half-dried adhesive of blood and knotted hair that would take forever to comb out.

When she looked at her fingers, they ran with the same grisly paint decorating the cold ground underneath her, and for one long, long moment, Quistis recalled the way he had looked when he stumbled raging into Garden's infirmary, wearing it like a mask.

There was just the raised twist of his scar there now, the same age-shiny bulge of disfigurement Squall would always have.

"It isn't serious." It wasn't, she was pretty sure-but he was right. That was not a thought she often experienced in relation to Seifer Almasy, but in the aftermath of Trabia's latest assault, one of Garden's most prominent instructors had far better things to do than blissfully nap away the remainder of this awful night. She had dead to bury and injured to tend to and shattered innocence to piece back together, just enough that B. Garden's youngest could figure out some way to keep going, keep functioning with their classmates sliced open in y incision autopsy pieces all around them.

When she tried to sit up, the world reeled around her.

Seifer grabbed her by the elbow; his hand fastened like steel trap around it, and he pulled her to both feet like she didn't weigh anything.

She pitched forward unsteadily, but now his arms were there again, coming smoothly around her; they held Quistis upright until she could do it herself, and the part of her that was just twenty-one-year-old woman and not the prematurely solemn military personnel that needed only her books and her students and her quiet, undisturbed library corners noticed how strong his forearms felt.

He reclaimed Hyperion and shouldered it again, walking off without another word.

* * *

><p>She was lying on her side, breathing shallowly when he found her.<p>

The fist squeezing his heart smashed it completely; it sank in flakes of burned-out cinders down into his stomach, and Squall fell to his knees in front of her.

"Rinoa." he whispered in a ragged gasp that was almost a sob, and that head, that head with its shiny raven hair and its big soft eyes and its smiling lips-

That head whispered out its slow, strenuous tread across the steel plates it lay across with a hiss like air from the chamber they had locked her away inside, the one he had charged with Lionheart out in front of him, the axe swing of his gun blade cutting cable sinew and the final chain links of the fetters he kept padlocked around his heart, the ones that couldn't keep her out any longer.

Her lips were the color of old corpse.

But she was smiling up at him anyway, and it filled his eyes with tears.

He pulled her up against his chest, her arms flopping like broken doll limbs around him.

"Squall-"

"Shh." He stroked his hand across her head, let it sift aside strands of glossy black that ran in parade streamers of silk through his fingers, flapping like the backlit banners of her float.

Squall blinked, and it all turned into just hair again, just smooth filaments of charcoal that made her face into something inhumanly pale beneath them.

"I was trying to save them-I didn't mean to-"

He kissed her forehead, tasting the saline acerbity of her fever sweat. "Shh, Rinoa."

"Is Quisty ok? She was up here with me, but she left to help-" The naked fear on her face made his stomach roll over; the tunnel vision of his terror for her hadn't encompassed anyone else, but he didn't tell her that.

He had her face in both hands now when he smiled down at her, because this was what mattered to him-this graceful bow of cheekbone and that pink lip corner, colored like bone now but still hers, still _his_, and when he leaned down to kiss it, he could almost pretend the world that went on without them far below didn't matter.

**A/N: Couple of things. One: I know in the game Seifer and Quistis are both 18, and that this is supposed to take place only two years later, so why, you're wondering, in the hell are they both 21? I decided to make them almost 19 at the beginning of the game so I could up their ages just a bit; pretend they turned 19 sometime during the events of FF VIII and the rest of those bastards just forgot their birthdays. Two, if you're a bit confused, don't worry-the reason behind this war with T. Garden will be explained soon-the characters just really haven't had a moment to take a breather and talk about what's going on. Three, thanks for reading; drop me a line if you'd like to see where this goes. I don't need anything lengthy, just something that lets me know you're interested so I don't have to battle this site and its sometimes pissy formatting system for no reason.**


	2. Interlude

**Medical File #56893, Cadet S. Almasy, ID #38771599**

**Physician: N. Ryden, MD**

_**Description: **_**Psychiatric evaluation for PTSD.**

_**Identification of Patient: **_**The patient is a 19-year-old Caucasian male, well-groomed in appearance, approximately 170-180 lbs. and 6' 2." The patient does not display outward signs of depression or trauma.**

_**Chief Complaint: **_**PTSD**

_**History of Present Illness: **_**Patient is a 19-year-old soldier presenting here today for evaluation of post-traumatic stress disorder on the suggestion of B. Garden's tri-council committee. Physical examination shows multiple scars and distal radius fracture to the left radius, as well as past trauma to the left femur. Patient was under the thrall of sorceress Edea Kramer during the Second Sorceress War and the committee has asked me to do a series of psychiatric evaluations to determine patient's eligibility for re-entry into B. Garden's SeeD program. Patient is, again, well-groomed and displays no signs of distress. He is very uncooperative; when I ask him to describe the nature of his relationship with Edea Kramer, patient insists that I 'eat him.' Further attempts at questioning client elicit no response. **

_**Psychiatric History: **_**Routine psych evals completed yearly at ages 14-18 reveal a marked tendency toward aggression as well as anger management issues, but no overt psychosis. Patient has never been on any medication for anxiety or depression.**

_**Substance Abuse History: Caffeine**_**: When I question patient about the amount of caffeine products he consumes per day, he asks me: "The fuck does how much chocolate I eat have to do with whether or not I'm bat shit?" **

_**Tobacco**_**: Patient claims he smokes 300 cigarettes a day, 'lit off a hooker's crab-infested twat-and even that's prettier than your fat fucking face.'**

_**Alcohol**_**: Patient denies, but his chart shows he was admitted to B. Garden's on-site infirmary a month ago for severe alcohol poisoning. **

_**Illicit drugs**_**: Patient claims: 'Heroin, meth, weed-a butt fuck ton of weed-cocaine, ecstasy, speed, some fucking cough syrup once when I was a kid-you name it, I've fuckin' done it'-but I do not think he is being genuine. **

_**Medical History/Review of Symptoms: Constitutional: **_**See **_**History of Present Illness**_**. No recent fever or sweats. **_**Neurological: **_**Patient's chart shows no history of seizures. When I question him about any possible past head injuries, he tells me that if I don't let him out of here right now, he's going to 'break **_**your**_** fucking head.' Patient's chart shows no past history of severe trauma to the head. **_**HEENT: **_**Patient's chart shows no issues here. **_**Cardiovascular: **_**Patient was evaluated for benign heart murmur at the age of 16. **

_**Allergies: **_**According to patient: 'Ugly women and bitch beers.' **

_**Current Medications: **_**None.**

_**Social History: **_**The patient was born in Galbadia. He lost both his parents to the First Sorceress War and was placed in an orphanage in Centra at the age of 4. Patient was accepted into B. Garden at the age of 10; from the very beginning of his tenure at Garden he displayed severe behavioral problems (inability to concentrate on class material, difficulty staying on task, a distinct lack of respect for all instructors, and bullying of classmates) for which he received many disciplinarian actions. Patient attempted the SeeD exam twice and failed both times due to inability to follow orders. During the Second Sorceress War, patient was possessed by sorceress Edea Kramer and fought against the resistance. He was pardoned for his crimes a year later. **

_**Diagnosis: **_**309.81, PTSD. For now, due to patient's lack of cooperation, we will give him a tentative diagnosis of mild PTSD, to be re-evaluated at a later date.**

_**Plan: **_**I will prescribe the patient some Estazolam for any sleep issues he may have, and I will see him back in two weeks time. Hopefully his next appointment will be more productive.**


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Balamb Garden

Trabia

The sun stained the sky in the blood glow of new dawn.

He was looking up at it when it crested the final hilltop dividing its tentative fingers of morning from the rest of the world, and suddenly, Seifer realized he had survived to see his birthday.

He was twenty-one today.

Not that anyone would give two shits.

He went back to shoveling, his shoulders straining under the load of snow and ice and heaped-up guts that burned his arms like fifty pound dumbbells strapped to his fucking wrists; he'd been digging graves for several hours now, and breaking through this shit was a little like trying to drive home a point into Chicken Wuss' thick, empty skull. Around him, exhausted-looking SeeDs did the same thing, carrying bodies and wounded and the abandoned weapons they could not afford to discard, stumbling in the giant circle of sanded-down gladiator ring that surrounded Garden now.

Quistis was trotting back and forth just a few hundred yards in front of him, going from one groaning cadet to another, carrying canteens and blankets and that goddamned look of compassionate anxiety that he wished she would turn his way, just a little.

Seifer scowled, turning his face away from her.

He didn't really know when the riptide surge of his feelings had begun to change directions, when the first, inevitable heart tug of new puppy love locked his chest up every time he looked at her. He hadn't felt that way two years ago, when all she could see was Squall fucking Leonhart and his pissy emo face. He hadn't felt that way even a year ago, not unless you wanted to count a few bored masturbation sessions that had involved some interesting fantasies concerning her neat little desk and that whip she always carried, which Seifer didn't.

He wasn't the only one who'd fantasized about nailing Instructor Trepe.

The problem wasn't that at all-the problem was that instead of tits and ass and leanly muscled athlete's legs, he saw blue eyes and open-lipped smiles and gentle humor burning like a flame behind her glasses.

The problem was, he wanted to listen to her fucking talk.

Fuck him if he could figure it out, because he didn't know when the hell it had even begun-maybe his first day back at Garden, when she had blinked for just a moment before welcoming him back to class, and the part of him that cringed and whimpered and waited for the backswing wind-up of his mother's slap tried not to cry, because she wasn't looking at him the way the rest of them did.

He did know he didn't need this shit.

His shovel tip hit hardened frost layer, and stopped.

He raised it, smashed it back down, and then threw it aside with a snarl when the handle cracked down the middle in his hands.

He was too goddamned tired for this.

Seifer stretched like a cat, popping his back. He could see the cowboy from here, sitting on Garden's front steps with the hat he'd rescued somewhere from the jumbled mayhem of piled bodies pulled down low over his eyes, repairing his gun.

No sign of Chicken Wuss, or Pubes either for that matter.

His eyes tried not to slide back to Quistis, but they did anyway. She was helping someone carry an empty stretcher over to an injured SeeD, lurching just a little as the exhaustion she kept trying not to let bleed through grabbed her by the throat, and hung on, just for a moment.

Those stripes of bruise like swipes of war paint under her eyes were getting bigger.

His hands were starting to go numb again; she still had his gloves, but when he looked over again, Seifer noticed she wasn't wearing them either. They were probably part of the combat zone beneath him now, tramped flat into the gray-brown slush that soaked his boots and flash burned his toes with the bleak anesthesia of oncoming frost bite. Not that he fucking cared if she lost all her fingers, but what did she think he'd fucking given them to her for, like one of those door-holding gentlemen she probably crapped herself over?

If he'd been Squall, she'd still be wearing them.

He stalked off toward Garden with his scowl in place, and now his eyes found that frigid fuck Leonhart, the one who'd always been her favorite even though he kept trying to get her to notice him, even though it took him half a fucking _year _to realize that he was never going to be as good as Squall.

Not in her eyes at least.

Not in the rest of Garden's, either, in the idol worship perk up that suddenly came over them as he descended on them like their fucking messiah, and inside him, Seifer's heart burned down to just a candle nub of deteriorating organ, decaying inside his chest.

He didn't understand why anyone liked that furrowed brow and old woman lip pinch and blandly robotic eye squint under hair that was getting too long, and he certainly didn't understand why anyone liked all that shit more than him.

So he'd burned half the fucking planet down in his quest for world dominance; he was still far more interesting than that boring asshole.

What kind of emotional spectrum did he have, anyway? The faint wistfulness that was the half a centimeter shift of his Rinoa worship? La di fucking da-Chicken Wuss' dumb face displayed more emotion while he was taking a shit; Seifer knew, because he'd had the misfortune to walk in on that particular moment when he went to take a piss after Weapons 102 and realized the stupid fuck had forgotten to shut his stall door. Seifer had done it for him, slamming it hard enough to raise a yelp from Zell and then a mournful groan, the meaning of which he really hadn't wanted to know.

He'd heard though that a few people had spotted Chicken Wuss hurtling through Garden without his pants later that day, holding his hand over his flopping genitals as he ran, and Seifer liked to think that maybe he'd startled the imbecile into shitting himself.

He just didn't want to see it.

Speak of the fucking devil; Zell loped toward him still wearing that stupid fucking coat, smeared in filth like the fusion of entrails and gore he could feel freezing themselves across his face in a new beard layer of stiffening frost.

"Hey Almasy, you seen Quisty?"

Fatigue squatted like a fat child on his eyes, and he discovered to his disappointment that he didn't have the energy for a snarky comment about the dried bead of snot crawling Wuss' upper lip like a fucking amoeba.

"Zell." a tired voice said from his shoulder, and Seifer almost jumped again; that was the second time she'd snuck up on him, and he was getting fucking sick of it. The fuck was she anyway, a goddamned cat?

"Squall wants to know if you got a casualty count yet."

"Two hundred and fifty." she said it calmly, quietly, like she was just reciting that morning's assignment, just calling out unpalatable cafeteria options to Zell and his unnatural hot dog fixation behind her in line, but underneath that, far underneath, Seifer could hear tension like over tightened cable line, straining at its breaking point.

Seifer blinked.

He blinked again.

"You're fucking shitting me."

She sighed and rubbed a hand down her face. She had dried blood under her fingernails like the tips of hardened ruby his mother's used to end in.

"No, I am not, Seifer, unfortunately."

Zell snapped his mouth shut. "That's like…half the cadets in training and the SeeDs we've got combined!" He looked scared; Seifer wondered with an internal sneer whether he was going to shit himself again.

"More than." she said with another sigh, and Seifer didn't like the way her burned out voice pulled at the heart strings he wasn't supposed to have. He really didn't fucking need them anyway-it wasn't like anyone would ever believe he had them, and if Squall was any indication, losing them to some prissy little bitch just turned you into a sissy laughingstock, even if Seifer did seem to be the only one who got the joke. "We've lost about half our SeeDs in training and more than three quarters of our actual SeeDs. Without Rinoa, we probably all would have been slaughtered."

Seifer folded his arms. "So what the hell are we supposed to do now?"

Across from him, Zell's brow creased hard.

"Clean up. Put everything back together-I haven't had time to talk to Squall, but I think he's considering speaking with Laguna. Esthar does not generally concern itself with Garden politics, but it has become a valuable ally in the last couple of years, and maybe if Laguna were to-" She paused, frowning. "Well, _intervene _I suppose, that might help."

_That _was going to go over well-Pubes had a daddy complex that rivaled the fucked-up snarl of confusion that was his feelings for Edea/Ultimecia/his mother-whoever the fuck that woman really was to him.

All three of them; that was the problem.

"So Esthar's gonna' tell T. Garden to stop picking on us? That sounds like a great fucking plan."

Quistis sighed. "I don't know what Esthar is going to do, Seifer-but I do know that if we are hit again, right now, we will probably all die. Garden can't sustain another attack like the one it just took; we don't have the numbers. Half of the cadets are not even close to SeeD status yet, and most of the ones who were just granted it were killed today. We don't have many viable options."

"We could take the fight to them-send in a team and kill the shit out of them before they know what's happening, like they tried to do to us today. Come on-that was fucking messed up, setting off that shit in the vents like that and then sending in an army. The fuck were they going to do anyway-kill us all while we were passed out on the floor?"

"Man, I hate to say this, but Almasy's right, Quisty."

"It's not our decision."

"Well, maybe it shouldn't be Pubes' either-it's my fucking ass on the line too, and I'm tired of waiting around for him to pick his fucking ball sack up and make his goddamned move-"

"Squall's decisions are saving lives." she replied coldly.

Sure-take his fucking side. Not like Seifer had thought it would go any other way. "Yeah, sure, Instructor-he saved a lot of them today."

She looked like she was vaguely contemplating shoving the handle of her whip into orifices where the sun couldn't quite reach, but out of the corner of his eye, he could see Zell off to one side, scratching the back of his neck and looking thoughtful-an observation Seifer could honestly say he had not usually had the occasion to make in regards to the blonde little twerp.

"I dunno, Quisty. Almay's a douche nozzle…but maybe he's right. Squall hasn't been doin' a whole lot, ya' know? I mean, I know he's doin' what he thinks is best, but maybe-"

She held up a hand, cutting him off mid-sentence.

"I don't know what the right answer is." she said quietly, and her voice was so tired those faggot thoughts started circling through his head again, the ones that urged him to step forward and fold his arms around her, keeping out everything that was not sunshine and rainbows and fucking kittens, the ones that shit daisies. He was really getting fucking sick of those child's dreams of castle tower tops and saved princesses and vanquished dragons-

He'd already tried to be the fairytale knight, and found out he wasn't very good at it.

Not like the ones in the stories, anyway.

"We'll figure this all out…somehow. Zell, I need your help; do you have any Cura stored?"

"Nah, used 'em all up already."

"All right then-go see Dr. Kadowaki, please. Get whatever you can off her, and bring some bandages as well as blankets-"

"I've got a few." Seifer interrupted.

"-some more stretchers, and anesthetic shots. We're going to need them." she continued without even acknowledging him.

"I _said '_I've got a few.'" he snapped. No one fucking ignored him, goddammit.

She gave him a dismissive look. "Then please go and make yourself useful." Quistis told him, and walked off without another word.

* * *

><p>"Irvy!"<p>

He had Exeter disassembled across his knees when the cry first reached his ears, cleaning mud-caked bowel piece from each groove and valley pit of expertly-crafted rifle wood, scrubbing away the gunk of war.

When he looked up, he could see her cute little face bobbing toward him through a sea of blue and red and not-quite white, surrounded in the fuzzy pink corona of her coat hood and leaking tears down both cheeks.

He stood up, carefully setting his gun aside. "Selphie, darlin,' what-"

She barreled right into his arms, pushing her face into his chest, pressing all of her up against him as close as she could get, until there was nothing between them anymore-just his coat and the scant square inch of cold air that slithered up his shins and onto his thighs, and then even that burned away. He felt just heat now, warm as the sun trying to burn its way through atmospheric cloud layers of Trabian winter.

He hugged her tightly, setting his chin on top of her head.

"I was worried-" She hiccupped. "-that you might have been hurt. I'm sorry, Irvy."

He smiled down into her hair, and the dead bolt of exhausted horror holding everything chained up inside of him slipped, just a little.

And that was all right, because she was here, in his arms, and her hair where it tickled the end of his nose smelled like raspberries, synthetic fruit bouquet that was not the shit and piss and gore reek of this long, long night.

* * *

><p>Seifer watched the reunion between the cowboy and his girlfriend-the fuck was her name again?-with a sneer.<p>

He told himself it was because all that weepy sentimentality shit made him want to vomit, and not because a part of him wished someone would run into his arms like that.

He picked up the shovel he'd abandoned and swung it over his shoulder like he'd carried Hyperion, side stepping corpses and puke mounds and the scattered vine trail of snapped off arteries trailing amputated limbs like his coat, snapping at his heels behind him while he walked.

Quistis was talking to Squall again.

He hated that it pissed him off-she could talk to whomever the fuck she wanted, whenever the fuck she wanted, and he wasn't allowed to give two damn shits about it; what did he care if she gazed up at Leonhart's squinty little face like that, tilting her head just so, letting her hair fall over one shoulder in a dirty curtain swish of blonde that was somehow still pretty-

Fuck.

Why the hell did she like him, anyway? The last time Seifer had checked, constipated old woman wasn't really a character trait most women found attractive, not the ones he'd 'dated'-a.k.a. fucked his way through like a rabbit in heat-anyway.

Somehow it seemed to work for Leonhart though; maybe it was all that brooding I-don't-care-about-your-feelings-which-makes-me-mysterious shit, which wasn't really all that fair-Squall turned that insipid little bland robot look on a woman and she creamed herself, but when Seifer interrupted a yappy drunk at the bar to tell her he didn't really give two shits about her opinion, thanks, he just wanted to get to the fucking, he was suddenly a dick.

With a hurled drink in his face, and a bar full of assholes laughing at him, until they suddenly realized what the scar wearing a half glass of watered-down Screwdriver meant, and shut up real fucking quickly.

She was just finishing up when he reached the entrance to Garden, and Seifer pasted on his biggest I-just-did-something-that's-really-going-to-piss-you-off-Instructor-and-now-I'm-going-to-top it smile, shifting the shovel where it bit into his collarbone.

Quistis looked away quickly when she spotted him.

"How'd your conversation with Pubes go?" he asked politely.

"It would be appreciated if you could refer to people by their actual names-you're twenty-one now Seifer, not fourteen."

"Well, I'm touched-didn't think you'd remember. Does that mean I get that birthday kiss after all? I'll settle for tequilas and breaking in your desk if the kiss is a little too intimate for you right now."

The sigh she hissed out hit him like a punch to the gut; why did she have to sound so broken-down, so old, and why the _hell _did he have to give two shits about it? He was as bad as that sexually-conflicted cowboy, wandering around in that fucking duster and his hat, holding hands now with the walking mouth he for some inexplicable reason kept dating.

"I don't have time for this, Seifer."

"I can be quick."

She looked at him like he was something she'd just stepped in. Her voice, when she spoke, reminded him of Trabia-arid and arctic and utterly, utterly unamused. "I'm sure."

"Ouch, Instructor."

"Did you need something?" She sounded like she really hoped he didn't.

"Hand job'd be nice."

Quistis smiled thinly. "I'm sure one of the…misguided cadets somewhere in the string you've been parading through your bedroom throughout most of your time at Garden would be happy to oblige."

Fujin used to reference those women too-only she'd used something more colorful than 'misguided cadets.'

He just couldn't seem to shut his fucking mouth-he doubted very much that crude suggestions about what she could do for his dick would exactly endear him to her-not that he, of course, gave two fucks about whether Instructor Trepe fawned all over him like she did Garden's idiot, no doubt puny-dicked commander-

She stumbled as they mounted the steps to Garden. Seifer caught her by the arm as both legs gave out for good beneath her, depositing Quistis in a flaccid little heap half across the knee he dropped to, her head flopping lifelessly against his thigh.

When her glasses hit stair step glazed in ice like crazed mirror glass, they broke.

He stared down at the too-bright shards of them a long, long time.

He could see the sun in them, bloody specks of refracted dawn light that turned the pieces of translucent razor into her nails, her talons, the monster claws he could never quite struggle free of-

And he could see-

He could fucking see-

-_-boy, come here-mommy looks pretty doesn't she-no no don't look at her don't look at her-mommy's so pretty isn't she-run away RUN YOU STUPID FUCK-seifer don't be like that mommy loves you-please-PLEASE- _

* * *

><p>Balamb<p>

2 Years Ago

When she fucked him, Seifer became two different halves of the same man.

There was new Seifer, worse than anything old Seifer had ever done, gangrene-eaten and unsalvageable, slamming her like he rammed the two foot broadsword end of Hyperion into twitching prisoner flesh.

New Seifer wanted all of her, in the sanguine halo circle of their murder victims, the ones building the wall between him and the old life he could never go back to now, and new Seifer did not care that he made each stroke into a punishment.

But there was still old Seifer, boy Seifer, the other part, the part that remembered once, a long time ago, this had been his mother-

His mother slapped him sharply across the face, and forced her tongue into his mouth.

Old Seifer rebelled, trying to jerk his head back, trying to twist out of the long-nailed prison hold she had on his damp cheeks-

And new Seifer's hips kept going, his pleasure grunts slipping from old Seifer's lips, and when she hooked those tapering razors of manicured nail into his ass cheeks, he couldn't tell whether he was supposed to cry or orgasm.

He stared at his ceiling for a long, long time after she left.

He didn't want to kill anyone else. He was as tired as he'd ever fucking been, tired and nauseated and he just wanted to _fucking go home_. He couldn't quite remember where home was anymore, or what it meant to him, but he knew it was not this perverse nightmare of sex and murder and hollowed-out skeleton feeling. It was not her hand on his face and his dick and the tapering knots of his ab muscles, coated in the snail sheen of her sweat.

It was-

Sun beams of fluorescent light…

Seifer frowned.

Sun beams of fluorescent light bouncing off something, off glasses-

He couldn't remember the color beneath them. They were circular and shiny and tilted at just the right angle, and he couldn't remember why the fuck they looked familiar to him.

What would she think of him if she knew everything? If she knew he wasn't just her mouthy student anymore, just a cocky little shit heel who thought he held the world in the palms of his hands-

He frowned again.

Maybe she'd always known he'd turn out this way-maybe that was why she'd preferred the aloof brunette wearing the same scar across his forehead in the lightning bolt zigzag of new healed laceration.

His head hurt; it always did when he tried too hard to think, when he shut his eyes and tried to bring everything back up to the surface-that comma mark of brown across the line of inflamed pink he studied each morning in the mirror that silently judged him with boy Seifer's eyes, and the pale thigh flash of long legs under uniform skirt-

Branching creepers of newly inked tribal tattoo-

_-the fuck did you do to your face, wuss-_

What did you hold onto, when the whole fucking world was spinning around you?

You gripped whatever the fuck you could, and she was the only thing that made sense to him anymore.

His pillows smelled like the sharp musk of their union. The pale line of breast curve he had fondled and licked and fucked blotted out those lights and that vine twist of permanent face paint and the knife slash of old wound that wasn't his, and he felt his dick jerk again in response.

Somewhere inside of him, boy Seifer screamed.

* * *

><p>Balamb Garden<p>

Trabia

Present Day

Quistis blinked sleepily up at him.

His mother's face had not looked like this-curves of cheekbone like frail moonlight and the soft, soft eyes of someone who is not the predator, not the monster hiding itself in his closet waiting for boy Seifer, frightened little faggot Seifer to come out again-

He touched her face with his cold hand like he was afraid she might break underneath it.

Quistis frowned. "Are you ok?"

He let his face settle into the familiar lines of his old scowl, the one he used to wear when she praised Squall and ignored him, the one he wrapped around him in the flimsy tissue paper of the armor that was his only protection against her, against memories of sex like rape and the sniveling cowardice of the shivering little fuck he had become in her manipulator's hands.

"Time for you to go to bed, Instructor."

* * *

><p>Garden was too cold.<p>

In Quistis' efforts to air it out, she had let in the subzero wind chill of the unforgiving climate that made up Trabia, rendering Garden's heaters virtually ineffective; one of the generators had shorted out at some point throughout the night, leaving just two more and a back-up that were hardly sufficient to battle the lingering cold that would most likely kill those wounded in the attack last night. She had spent the last several hours inspecting the procession of injured straggling in a long, miserable line down the corridor leading to the overfull infirmary, dispensing blankets and jackets and the hot chocolate she had ordered the cafeteria to start distributing by the twenty pound vat.

Seifer followed her for the first twenty minutes, barking at her to 'take a fucking break.'

At first, the nagging thought that he was actually concerned for the welfare of someone who was not himself almost inspired another half-faint in Quistis like the one she had gone into on the steps of Garden, held up by his warm, warm arms. It was almost…flattering. Seifer Almasy had never cared about anyone before except perhaps Raijin and Fujin, and now even the two of them were gone, severing his last tie to the faint tinge of humanity their friendship had given him-but now, now perhaps, after all this time, he had allowed the nuclear rage in that furnace chest to leak out, just a bit, and let in the first beginning spark of the compassion she had given up kindling inside him a long time ago.

And then she had realized he probably just wanted someone to order around, and sent him away.

He stormed off like she had just personally insulted him, shouldering aside anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in his path, and she had wasted several precious moments frowning after him.

He was touchier than Selphie during that certain time of the month, a hellish week during which her friend morphed into something not dissimilar to a Ruby Dragon.

She stood surveying the main level of Garden now, strewn with the huddled forms of SeeDs and cadets alike, napping fitfully in the tangle of cold weather gear that had been Selphie's idea.

It was not a bad one, actually, unlike the one time she had decided that the Winter Festival should feature a vaudeville act centering around an all-male revue that would include Irvine, Squall and Zell-which also might not have been such a bad idea, except that somehow it occurred to her that the show could only be a success if they dressed in formal women's wear and sang back-up to her atrocious piano playing. Irvine and Zell, predictably, had hammed it up-Irvine because to refuse meant several weeks of Selphie-inflicted abstinence, and Zell because he was…Zell.

The final act had culminated in a rather magnificent T-board crash, an apparently impromptu mooning courtesy of Irvine, and one very pissed off commander stomping off-stage hurling the cheery pink bows Rinoa had plaited into his hair.

Quistis had always wondered how they'd gotten him up there in the first place.

Selphie's latest idea had fortunately not been nearly so grandiose; with Squall's permission-authorization she had remembered to obtain much later, after carrying out enough of her plan that it would have been pointless to refuse by the time she did get around to informing Squall of her intentions-she'd ordered every dorm room raided of all sleeping gear, and the storage center where they kept mission supplies emptied of any survival equipment kept specifically for cold weather missions. She'd then directed a handful of 'volunteers'-Selphie's idea of 'volunteers' being something along the lines of anyone she could bully into whatever she wanted with threats of mysterious Garden Festival Committee sign-ups-to lay out the sleeping bags and military issue fleece blankets they had collected anywhere there was space. In the center, they tucked those most vulnerable to the cold-the more severely injured, on stretchers piled high with covers like the layers of snow coating Garden's windows as Trabia's skies cracked open around the cloudbanks of angry steel hovering outside, and begun to pour flurries of blizzard in earnest.

She was starting to suspect it was really more of an excuse for a giant slumber party-especially considering the way her friend was currently wielding nail polish like a weapon, painting the toenails of an out cold soldier bright, canary yellow.

Quistis watched Irvine trying to persuade Selphie to leave him alone with a smile, close enough to hear her friend's vehement insistence that it would cheer him up when he woke up.

If he woke up. Her smile slipped, and then vanished completely.

She spotted Zell trotting along the patchwork amalgamation of home-sent hand- stitched quilts (Ma Dincht herself had provided more than a few of them) and the scratchy blue wool of the more regulation-adhering dorms-hers, for instance-holding a hot dog in each hand, another protruding from his mouth.

He waved to her with one of the hot dogs. "EEQGQ! Oo eureh ha-ha nurf?"

She was certain it should have disturbed her more that she'd just understood most of that.

Quistis smiled. "No, thank you Zell. Have you seen Squall around?"

He finished off the hot dog in one last Herculean bite that fascinated Quistis in the horrible sort of way one can't look away from a train wreck. "Nuh-huh. He might be at the infirmary with Rinoa; he was gonna' take her to get checked out. S'ok, I think though-she's just really worn out. You need to get some rest, too, Quisty."

So everyone kept telling her.

Outside, fingers of storm tore at Garden with the jilted shrieks of battlefield casualty, left behind to molder and wither and peel apart at the seams in the decomposing ash flakes of rotting skeleton.

Part of Quistis was still on the horror movie film set of that snow field, watching them die around her, watching them lose fingers and leg joints and friends. They were good students, young students, _her _students, and they poured blood like the teardrops she cried as she buried each of them, down the twisted maul lines of missing knee cap and shoulder socket and skull back.

Across from her, Zell dropped cross-legged to the flamboyant quilt square that was his mother's latest indulgence for the son she doted on, nudging Irvine, lounging one sleeping bag down from his friend with his long legs stretched in front of him and his hat pulled down over his eyes. "Hey man, hold my hot dog."

"Whoa, Dincht-that ain't even funny."

"No, man, I mean my _hot dog_."

"I know what you said." he drawled. "That's why I ain't doin' it."

Zell poked stale sausage under the brim of his friend's hat, flipping it up off his eyes.

It turned a neat spiral mid-air and landed in his lap.

"Yo!" Zell yelled, in a voice not quite loud enough to shatter the sound barrier, but almost. Quistis winced. "Hold this."

"No way-I'm _not _touchin' that. You know those things bounce, Dincht? They're probably made out of rubber-I don't know how you can eat 'em."

"I think rubber's probably slightly more edible." Quistis interjected, smiling; their interactions always had been able to chase away anything else, like the sun hunting clouds in the painter's canvas of flawless blue above Cid's shoulders.

He'd bounced a laughing Seifer on them, unburdened Seifer with his child's mop top of blonde almost covering unfettered green, making faces at Zell from his new vantage point.

She could still remember pieces of that boy sometimes; the recollections Shiva had not bled her of showed Quistis wooden knight's swords and Selphie-crafted princess' hats and the ragged-run dog that had unwillingly played the part of the 'dragon' he was supposed to rescue her from. When she'd escaped the tower they'd spent an entire afternoon constructing from old carboard boxes supplied by Matron on her own, Seifer had thrown his sword at her and then made Zell cry by stomping the piece of cake he'd been happily consuming nearby.

There was nothing of that boy in the man she could see from here, slouched against the wall with his coat across his knees, the ragged shreds of gray that were still sometimes an imposition of random heather flicker through her dreams stained in the faded strawberry of old blood.

She'd always wondered why he'd kept it; it belonged to a part of him that Quistis would have thought he'd liked to put behind him.

Maybe he kept it to remind him precisely of what he'd been; powerful and feared and fulfilling his knight's dreams at last with his mother at his side and the world at his feet.

He was crouched down in front of the library entrance, the bedding at his feet spread so there was no room for anyone else in case the look on his face didn't succeed in scaring off potential bedmates, she assumed. It was completely contradictory to the whole reason for the rows and piles of sleeping bodies packed tightly together around the circle of corridor that looped past the infirmary and the library he camped in front of, curving around out of sight toward the training center and the cafeteria Zell would no doubt be raiding at several points throughout the night. He would probably freeze to death in the middle of the night; he was wearing just a cable-knit turtleneck in severe black and gray uniform pants that would not adequately keep out the stagnant chill Garden's laboring heaters could not banish.

Quistis sighed.

"Hey, Quisty,' thanks for puttin' your sleeping bag in between me and Dincht. I don't know where Selphie's gone off to, and I was afraid Dincht might try'n do stuff to me in my sleep."

Zell gurgled something she couldn't translate this time through a mouthful of hot dog.

"Hmm? Oh, you're welcome. I'll be back in just a minute."

She was going to regret this, Quistis knew as she cautiously approached Seifer; she was not quite certain why she was even doing it, except that somewhere, very far down inside her, there was still that deep-buried sense of responsibility for the eighteen-year-old student he had been, ambitious and uncooperative and an enormous source of frustration. She remembered watching him from her desk, throwing balled up paper at an unresponsive Squall and looking pleased with himself, and she had thought, with the misguided certainty of the inexperienced young instructor she had been back then, that if he would just try, if he would just _apply _himself, he could shape something great from that clever young mind and lithe fighter's body.

Instead he had tried to burn the world, and there was a part of Quistis that still remembered the face he'd worn beside that stranger with her mother's angled cheekbones and the frigid authority of the cold stare that had never belonged to her.

There was a part of her that still took the memory of those rabid green eyes like a punch to the gut, because he was her greatest failure.

He looked up as she stepped up into the library entryway, lifting her feet carefully around his sleeping gear to stand in front of him.

"Someone stole all the shit off my bed." Seifer informed her, sounding none too pleased.

"I know." she replied calmly. "Everyone's bed was stripped on orders from Squall. Where do you think all of this came from?"

"What?" he snapped. "So now Pubes thinks he can just come in and take anything he want? This is a bunch of-"

"Seifer, in case you hadn't noticed, it is very cold in here-dangerously so. This is necessary until we can get the heaters properly up and running again; it's just basic survival. In cold weather conditions, body heat-"

"I know basic cold weather survival." he snarled. "I just don't want some fucking idiot rubbing his crabs all over my sheets."

She resisted pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Everything will be thoroughly washed before being returned to you."

"By who, Instructor? Are you gonna' do it? How do I know Chicken Wuss isn't masturbating in my blanket right now?"

"Because Zell is using a very ugly quilt his mother sent to him last month."

"Tch."

He turned his attention back to his coat, frown lines creasing his scar as he tried to scrub enough mud and gore out to make it wearable in polite company again.

Not that Seifer really associated with polite company.

"Seifer, you could freeze up here alone."

He looked up with a sneer. "Don't worry, Instructor, I've got thoughts of you to keep me warm."

She hid the fist that balled along her side behind her back. Of course he wasn't going to make this easy-she had known that all along, hadn't she? "Seifer," Quistis said very carefully, pacing the words between her teeth so they did not emerge as sharply as a part of her wanted them to. "Just come down with me, please." She tried to remember that punching the nose of someone celebrating a rather significant birthday was generally frowned upon in society-although the majority of society had not had the misfortune of dealing with Seifer Almasy. It was not really a situation that could be judged by people who did not know him, so she allowed herself the fantasy for a moment before trying again. "No one is going to bother you. Most of the students are going to sleep right now, anyway."

"_You're _bothering me." he pointed out without looking up.

"And that will stop if you pick up your stuff and bring it down next to my sleeping bag." Zell's, anyway-she certainly wasn't going to share the ten foot width of tiled corridor that would not be nearly enough space between the two of them.

He stared up at her for a long time without saying anything, letting his eyes bore into her in two intense pinpoints of laser focus that cut right through her, through the paper layer fragility of Instructor Trepe to the tired, aching woman below, weeping silently over the bodies of the cut-up fifteen-year-olds she had not allowed herself to properly mourn. She felt naked, stripped, and her spine crawled with his look, with those assessor's eyes that silently informed her she couldn't hide anything from him.

Finally he stood, arching his spine into a long feline stretch of popping joints, one hand flashing out to catch the jacket that slipped from his knees and tried to drape itself across her feet.

"If you want me that badly, you can just ask, Instructor; I'm pretty accommodating."

He was as accommodating as that Nazi of a cafeteria lady Zell was always concocting intricate plots against, but she didn't say that as she led him back toward the mound of comforters and bags and the fluffy pink throw someone had tossed over Irvine while she was away. Selphie, most likely; Quistis couldn't see the streak of neverending movement that was her friend anywhere nearby, but she was pretty sure she recognized the blanket as one of many from the monstrosity of a bed Selphie had decorated in a riotous clash of mismatched colors that Irvine had informed her was literally blinding.

Beneath it, he snored softly, out cold already. Next to him, Zell was using his hat to keep the disintegrating pieces of his stale hot dog bun from landing on his mother's quilt.

Irvine would be pleased about that-in the same way that Rinoa had been pleased when Squall had forgotten their first anniversary and left her stranded alone at one of Balamb's most upscale restaurants.

"Here." she said, indicating the spot between Irvine and Zell, picking up the corner of her sleeping bag so she could shift it to the other side of Zell-Irvine would not be happy that she had abandoned him like this, but she was pretty certain he could count on Seifer to keep his hands to himself.

"I'm not sleeping next to these queers!" he snapped.

"What'd you bring _him _over here for, Quisty?" Zell demanded, scowling up at his childhood nemesis, his cheeks distended in a chipmunk distortion that hardly made him look threatening.

She put a hand to her throbbing forehead. "Fine." She folded her bag over one arm and then replaced it on the other side of Zell, carefully smoothing each wrinkle and dimple mark into ironed-out precision once more and then motioning for Zell to slide over.

"What's he doing here?" Zell hissed again.

"Just move, please." The headache that tightened its iron band across both her temples was not in the mood for arguments.

Seifer dropped his things beside her.

"I sleep naked." Zell informed him, folding both arms across his chest and glaring over the top of Quistis' head.

"I sleep armed." Seifer retorted, returning Zell's sullen look.

"If I wanna' pull it out, Alm_ass_y, there's nothing you can do about it."

"Could we please not pull anything out?" Quistis intervened. "It's been a long day for all of us; if you could both just-"

"Just keep it the fuck away from me, or you're gonna' wish you still had all three inches of it, Wuss!" Seifer snarled.

Zell's face flared bright red. He hit Seifer across the face with Irvine's hat-the modern day equivalent of the thrown gauntlet, Quistis supposed-and just like that, a fist fight broke out between the two of them.

She dropped her face into both hands.

Beside them, Irvine slumbered blissfully on.

* * *

><p>War is not the pretty cinema montage of triumphing heroes and surrendering villains and clean cut protagonist death, valiantly martyred for the good of the many.<p>

It is a distant galaxy fireball, burning with the nuclear radiance of dying stars. It is asthmatic exhaustion wheeze and yielding muscle fiber and crushed friend skull, and it is the glutinous gelatin of crushed eyeball.

It is the chewed-open leg stump she helps a dying SeeD hold together, and it is the slow smolder fire of tears building behind her eyes, because she can tell he is not going to make it.

And it is this that she goes to bed each night seeing:

The frayed curve of knuckle that is all that is left of disembodied child hand, collateral damage casualty that makes her want to cry. It is all mixed up with the spray of sawed-off artery lines and faceless skull grin that make up the jumbled entropy of her nightmares, and when she cannot figure out how to wake up, when she can not unlock the secret of frantic _escape _that is sealed away in her quivering mind, she tries to remember them.

Disorderly spikes of blonde like the sun, weighed down with the globs of sand the boy behind him keeps throwing.

The adult frown line he wears on his child's face, beneath the shaggy curve of the hair he won't let Matron cut.

Bully's laughter and anxious dog bark and fresh baked cookie scent, and the saline insect sting of incoming ocean breaker.

And slowly, slowly, smashed-flat chest cavity and snarled intestine rope resolves into the upside down v of painter's gulls on a flat blue canvas, and she can breathe again.

She is lying on her back under the sun, on that beach of wave-eaten gold where she can hear games of hide-and-seek and tag and gentle parent's voices, calling them inside to dinner, because this-

This is the only place she feels safe, now.

She is alone for a long, long time.

She is alone until the sun drowns itself in the far off border line where sky meets sea, and she is alone until the final match flare of daylight snuffs itself on that dividing edge of dark ocean water and darker nightscape.

And then suddenly she is not, not anymore.

He is sitting beside her now, with his arms around his skinny little legs, and when he turns to her, she cannot see the miniature tyrant in his face anymore. "You want me to kiss it?" he asks with his bully's lips, the ones he uses to tease and berate and threaten, and she frowns.

And then, vaguely, she can recall spinning sky and ground, fusing together in one baffling kaleidoscope of emerald green and robin's egg blue, and she remembers holding scraped up knee like it is the end of the world-

He leans over, and puts his damp mouth over the band-aid Matron used to seal her cut with the grave solemnity of a field med applying her first tourniquet, and when he looks up at her, he is smiling, and for just a little while, she thinks she might be in love with him.

"All better, Quisty."

_-all better quisty it'll all get better-_

_-all better-_

* * *

><p>When she woke in the middle of the night and decided-after a half hour of fitful tossing and turning-that she would not be able to recapture the somewhat restful slumber she had finally dropped off into, Quistis quietly eased the edge of her sleeping bag aside, and slipped carefully out, trying not to wake Seifer.<p>

Zell would sleep through a nuclear apocalypse; she didn't need to worry about disturbing him.

The cold hit her like a blow as she left their body heat behind, and for a long moment she studied the blanket-draped s curve of Seifer's sleeping form, re-thinking her decision.

He did not look like the man who'd lived in the crawling darkness of her shadow when he slept; he looked, Quistis thought with a pang, like the boy who'd kissed her knees and her elbows and the missing top layer of her right shin.

Hyne, she had been a clumsy child.

It felt odd, seeing him like this, with his damaged face gone soft and unthreatening, and she wondered if Squall looked the same way when he slept. She didn't think so; Squall would be on guard even in slumber, perpetually on the lookout for someone waiting to catch him in a smile.

But Seifer…Seifer wore his emotions like a shout, slapping everyone in the face with them, with his rage and his disdain and underneath that, far underneath…perhaps the bit of pain that had to be lurking in his shunned traitor heart, the broken shards of agony that were the splinters of the little boy who'd kissed her childhood wounds.

Part of her, the part that was still the child Quistis who'd chased fireflies through the shifting quagmire of the sand dunes surrounding the orphanage with him…that part still wanted to believe that somewhere, that little boy yet existed. That was the unscarred Seifer, the innocent Seifer, the Seifer she had sometimes, almost, been able to tolerate.

She torqued and twisted her way through cautious stealth maneuvers that took her in a long winding path through jumbles of sleeping cadets and toward the sliver of light she could still leaking from beneath the infirmary door at the end of the broad curve of hall, trying her best not to kick or step on anyone.

She walked in without knocking when she reached the entrance at last, shutting the door quietly beneath her.

Dr. Kadowaki had a file open across her messy desk, the angled contour of lamp shade she hunched beneath throwing ripples of muted yellow across the papers in her hand.

When she looked up with a frown, Quistis realized how very, very old she suddenly looked. Today had aged her a hundred years-a thousand years, and she could see it bending the kindly physician's spine into the bow-backed hunch of an old woman.

She looked exactly the way Quistis felt.

Her face cleared as she squinted through the reading glasses perched at the end of her nose, and she smiled, snapping the folder shut and knotting her hands over the top of it. "Quistis! You should be sleeping."

Quistis returned her smile warmly. "I could say the same for you." She took a seat in the worn upholstery of the chair facing Dr. Kadowaki across the plane of disorganized wood between them.

"Yes, an old woman like me probably should be napping about right now. Too much work to do, though. I've been reorganizing files for the last couple of hours; I had to add a lot of new ones today." She pulled off her glasses with a sigh, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

Quistis slanted her eyes curiously toward the file half-blocked by the lump of Kadowaki's hands, and saw to her surprise _S. Almasy, ID #38771599 _stamped neatly in one corner.

What was she doing with Seifer's medical chart? He hadn't needed to visit the infirmary today, if Quistis recalled; he was one of the few who'd sustained nothing more than minor, if any injuries.

She pulled her gaze back up as Dr. Kadowaki began to speak again. "I have a bit of hot chocolate left, if you'd like it."

Quistis nodded. "Yes, thank you."

Garden's head physician heaved herself out of her chair with the pop and groan of aged joints, and waddled stiffly across the small waiting area to a nearly empty coffee pot sitting on the countertop across from them.

"It's probably lukewarm by now." she warned, setting a mug down in front of Quistis.

"That's all right."

"Put it in that thing because it was the only thing I had to keep it somewhat warm; I hate coffee, personally. Don't know why Cid ever bought me that thing." She slipped her glasses back on. "So, Instructor Trepe, what brings you into my office at 3:30 in the morning?"

"Problems sleeping. And I'm long overdue for an unofficial visit."

"Yes you are, young lady." Kadowaki leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs at the ankle.

Quistis sipped from her mug. Kadowaki had been her most trusted confidante when she'd first entered Garden, second only to the stuffed Chocobo Matron had given her when she left, adopted out to a family that hadn't understood they really didn't want children after all until after they had already accepted her into their home. Soon after, she was sent to B. Garden, and not long after that, her brief foray into a family unit that did not consist of the orphanage gang faded into the blurred watercolor smudge of all her other childhood memories.

"What are you doing with Seifer's file?"

The woman sitting across from her huffed a long, drawn-out exhalation, aging a little more before Quistis' eyes.

"To be honest, I don't know. I pulled everything out to reorganize it, and while I was sorting through this mess, I came across it. No need to read it again, really; I know it all by heart now. I just can't stop myself from coming back to it sometimes."

Quistis furrowed her brow. "Why not?"

Dr. Kadowaki leaned back again, her face tightening thoughtfully. "I don't know. I…suppose I still picture him the way I see all of you sometimes-still the little boys and girls that first walked through that door with your banged up knees and bloody noses." Her wrinkles softened into a gentle smile. "Did you know Seifer used to cry when I gave him shots? He always pretended it never happened afterward; I used to hear him bragging about how much it didn't hurt, poking fun at anyone who dared admit they were scared of needles."

Quistis hid a smile; Seifer would not be happy to learn she was privy to that little tidbit of information.

"Reading his file makes me remember just how very long ago that was. That little boy is a very wounded man now, crying out for attention."

Quistis stared down into the dirty reflection of her hot chocolate. "You don't hate him, do you?"

"No, I suppose I don't. Seifer was not my favorite patient by far-pain in the ass, was what he was-but a lot of that was just a scared little boy trying to pretend he was tough. He was such a tiny little thing for a while, all blonde hair and those big green eyes-a beautiful child, just beautiful. I used to always think about how he'd need such a large stick to discourage the ladies when he got older." Kadowaki paused to select a pen from her desk, that frown line back across her creased brow, her hands gripping diaphanous pen casing like she needed an anchor. Quistis recognized it-Zell had picked it up for her during a routine visit to Ma Dincht, and she had accepted it just as graciously as if it weren't colored like vomit and embossed with the cheesy looking cartoon character that was apparently Balamb's official mascot. "He isn't much different from the way he was as a child, you know. Seifer is self-centered, rude…ready for a fight at the drop of a hat, and if someone else won't drop the hat, he will. But he's not evil." She looked pensive, staring down into the exaggerated bulbs of the eyes that rattled back and forth when she rotated the pen slightly. "I don't think anyone really realizes that about him, not even himself."

"He doesn't make it easy for people to come to any other conclusion." Quistis replied softly, taking another sip. The beverage burned its way down her throat and into her stomach, where it sat like a smoldering coal.

"That's certainly true. Still; don't we all deserve a little forgiveness now and then?" She set the pen down abruptly and picked up the file in question, tapping it lightly against the corner of her desk to resettle the pages poking out through the top back into military uniformity.

Forgiveness was only possible to give if the intended recipient were interested in it, Quistis thought, but aloud she said nothing. Talking about Seifer reminded her too much of the six-year-old boy who had sometimes been her friend, the one that wiped the tears from her face after she sprained her ankle in a hole Zell had burrowed into the sand. He'd checked to make sure no one was watching first, then crouched in front of her, smearing the blotches of her grief across both cheeks with his dirty little hands; his demands that she stop had been harsh, stinging, and eventually earned him a punch in the mouth, but now Quistis wondered with the clarity of an adult if he hadn't turned his voice into the sharpened barb he made of it because he was frightened that he didn't know how to help her.

Still, the needle prick that was inquisitiveness flooded her system like venom, and she watched Kadowaki set the file aside. "What do you mean that he's a 'wounded man' now?"

"Never you mind; that's for Seifer to say and not me. Just be aware that there's a lot you don't know about what he endured during the war."

Quistis let it drop. She could see by her friend's expression that she wouldn't be prying anymore information on the subject out of her anytime soon, and at any rate, she was done talking about Seifer. She dropped her chin onto one hand, letting it slide off to one side, creasing her cheek as it went. "What do you think about today?"

"Well, dear, I think we're fucked." Dr. Kadowaki said kindly. "Pardon my language."

"I wouldn't have put it quite so…ruthlessly, but I agree."

"Well, that's you, Quistis-always a polite one, even when you were just a little girl. You know you were my only patient to ever thank me after getting a vaccination? I always used to give you an extra lollipop just because you were so cooperative. An old woman like me, I don't have time to beat around the bush."

"Squall is going to contact his father tomorrow; he thinks pressure from Esthar will make T. Garden back off. It doesn't look like we have many other options at this point."

"No; it sure doesn't. We were evenly matched for a while, but now…all those lives today. It kills me, Quistis." She glared severely through her glasses. "You watch yourself out there-you get yourself killed like the rest of those poor children and I'll find you when it's my time, you can believe that."

Quistis smiled again. "I do."

Kadowaki shook her head. "I'm afraid Garden's never going to be left completely alone, not with Rinoa here."

Quistis frowned down into her hot chocolate, picturing magic like the lines of vein that trailed bullet chewed arm stub, exploding out in a volley that dropped star bursts of fire like it brought death. Anti-sorceress sentiments had been at their peak directly after the war, their momentum petering out somewhat in the months that followed and then spiking again not long before T. Garden's first, cataclysmic attack.

SeeD had been created to vanquish the sorceresses, not protect them-she could still hear T. Garden's headmaster passionately addressing the mob that gathered before him, hurling those words like knives, riling the crowd more and more until the crowning summit of their angry enthusiasm broke, and they rioted through the streets of Balamb.

Partially, Quistis could not blame them; fresh on the heels of Ultimecia's brief reign, Rinoa was not looked at all favorably upon. But Rinoa, sweet-tempered, innocent-faced Rinoa had not committed any crimes, and, very reluctantly, Balamb's government agreed that they could not imprison a woman simply because one day she might, perhaps, twist suddenly into the vindictively ambitious creature that wore Matron's humane mother's face.

Political tension between Gardens always shifted slightly; competition for missions and contracts kept a frisson of never static strain between them all, swinging from not quite friendly rivalry to outright hostility. T. Garden, however, had always remained fairly neutral-it was Galbadia Garden where most of the problems generally originated, until the takeover of T. Garden's new headmaster.

He was more politician than elite military commander if you asked Quistis, although Cid, fatherly, kindly Cid in his rumpled vest spotted in the old stains of his last meal had always seemed an odd choice to her as well.

Jack Grayson was all fire and brimstone, the televangelist preacher who couches his greed in zealous religious verse. He was annoying and crass and looking to blow his own horn the way most who ventured into the world of affairs of state were-just another ego-inflated man wanting someone to pay attention to him, but the problem was, people listened to him.

She supposed sooner or later, it had had to come down to this.

Most governments turned a blind eye to whatever actions one Garden or another enacted against the other-they were too valuable to disband, and not assailable for the same reason, and at first it had not mattered. Evenly matched, locked in the drawn out months-long campaign of equal ability that teetered on the fine point of the cliff edge they all balanced on, one just waiting for the other to take that one last misstep-

Until T. Garden had figured out a way to get around all that.

"What Rinoa did last night isn't going to help any. T. Garden might be on their own for right now, but they won't always be."

"It was the only thing that saved us."

"I know." Dr. Kadowaki picked up her pen again, spinning it in a slow twirl of calamitous neon yellow and burnt orange, two colors that, in Quistis' opinion, shouldn't even exist, much less be combined. "But it might be the thing that kills us all, in the end."

Quistis sat and digested that for a long, long time, letting the silence drop like a hammer between them, the drink she cradled between her callused soldier's palms going cold as her heart.


	4. Interlude 2

**Medical File #56893, Cadet S. Almasy, ID #38771599**

**Physician: N. Ryden, MD**

_**Description: **_**Psychiatric evaluation for PTSD.**

_**Identification of Patient: **_**The patient is a 19-year-old Caucasian male, well-groomed in appearance, approximately 170-180 lbs. and 6' 2." The patient is very subdued today. **

_**Chief Complaint: **_**PTSD**

_**History of Present Illness: **_**Patient is a 19-year-old soldier presenting here again today for his second appointment for evaluation of post-traumatic stress disorder. He is re-applying to B. Garden's SeeD program, and is undergoing these evaluations to determine whether or not he is stable enough to be re-entering the program. **

**Patient was very uncooperative last time; today he says nothing, not even when I try to prompt him. When I ask him how he has been doing, he just stares at me. Last week was the execution of sorceress Edea Kramer, and I assume this is what is bothering him, however, when I again attempt to prompt him, patient just keeps looking at the wall like he doesn't hear me. **

_**Psychiatric History: **_**See previous report.**

_**Substance Abuse History: **_**Today I again attempt to question patient about any substance abuse history due to his unrealistic answers last time, but he will not tell me anything. I see in the patient's chart that he was caught at fourteen sneaking a cigarette in the instructor's lounge, but there is no indication that this became a regular habit for him. **

_**Medical History/Review of Symptoms: Constitutional: **_**See **_**History of Present Illness**_**. No recent fever or sweats. **_**Neurological: **_**Patient's chart shows no history of seizures. When I question him about any recent medical complaints he may have experienced, patient does not respond. **_**HEENT: **_**Patient's chart shows no issues here. **_**Cardiovascular: **_**Patient was evaluated for benign heart murmur at the age of 16.**

_**Allergies: **_**None recorded in the chart, and patient is unresponsive. **

_**Current Medications: **_**Just the Estazolam, which I prescribed for him last time. **

_**Social History: **_**See previous report. **

_**Diagnosis: **_**309.81, PTSD. Patient is displaying clear signs of some kind of trauma today, which again I think is due to the recent execution of Edea Kramer. **

_**Plan: **_**I will keep him on the Estazolam for now and see how he does on that; I will see him back in a week, and hopefully he will be ready to talk soon. **


	5. Chapter 3

**A/N: The site cut off the e-mail addresses in the e-mail that Quistis opens later on, and I'm not sure how to make them show up, so that's why there's a blank space in between the parenthesis. If anyone knows how to format it so they show up, please let me know.**

**Disclaimer: I forgot to do this in the first couple of chapters, so here is my big disclaimer for the whole story: I DON'T OWN FINAL FANTASY 8. I'm just playing in the world Squaresoft created; it's all theirs, except for the fucked-up way my twisted little mind chooses to interpret it at times. **

**Chapter Three**

Balamb Garden

Trabia

Seifer felt warm for the first time since arriving in this glacial perdition of ice storm and hail breeze and the slow drift snow gale that reminded him of her eyes, cold as the flutter of air he could feel across the exposed curve of his shoulder and watching him forever inside the cramped prison cell of his mind.

He burrowed deeper into the source, twin arches of filled-out flesh that made his dreams ring with laughter, because the part of him that was still sort of conscious recognized them.

"Nice tits, Instructor." he murmured sleepily.

"Nnngh…thank you."

Seifer felt his mouth tilt in the upraised lip curl of the satisfied smile he relaxed into, and then stop, coiling back around into the frown line of his confusion.

Something was off about the voice. His sleep-fuzzed brain groped for the answer, picking its way through the layers of contentment that tried to persuade him to forget about it and go back to sleep.

He'd sat through endless hours of lectures and drills and boring history speeches, and that wasn't Quistis' voice.

Seifer pulled his face away slightly, forcing his gummed-shut eyes open. He rubbed the blurry arcs of leftover sleep from them, squinting in the feeble light radiating from the ornamental circle of lights spaced at regular intervals along the ring of fountain enclosing Garden's main level.

And then his eyes slowly resolved the shape before them into clear focus, and he realized he'd been snuggling Chicken Wuss' ass.

"_Fucking Hyne_!" he yelled, throwing himself backward away from a dead asleep Zell, sending a ripple of panicked shouting through abruptly-awakened SeeDs.

"Wazzat?" Zell mumbled, cracking an eye open. "Waz goin' on?" he slurred.

"Goddammit! The fuck do you think you're doing?" he roared, yanking the scrunched-up bundle of Zell's quilt out from underneath his own blanket, tumbling the still half asleep young man onto Irvine, who jerked straight up with the wide-eyed look of someone freshly doused in ice water.

"The hell's goin' on?" he demanded, scrambling for Exeter, rolling out from beneath Zell's sleep torpid bulk and coming up with his gun in one hand.

Out of the corner of one eye, Seifer could see Quistis laughing at him.

Around him, stirring SeeDs were beginning to realize that there was in fact no new emergency to be handled, and slowly they begun to settle back down, their reactions ranging from dirty looks shot from beneath the half slit opening of eyes already beginning their fall back into drugged slumber, and language almost as bad as the epitaphs Seifer currently spat through his clenched teeth.

Zell sat up, rubbing his eyes.

He wasn't sure who he was more pissed at-the idiot who'd smashed his ass up against Seifer's face, or fucking Trepe, holding her stomach now as she leaned against the wall behind her for support.

"What's going on?" Zell asked more lucidly, squinting up at him.

"What's going on is you fucking molested me." he snapped, and now that fuck, that long-haired, girl-eyed pretty-faced little _fuck _was laughing at him as well, and the world burned red around him.

No one _laughed _at him. No one ever _fucking _laughed at him, because the world was his, it was _his_, and if he wanted to crush it, if he wanted to just close his fingers in a terminal throttlehold around the whole fucking thing, he could do it-

And now Seifer stopped, cutting himself off, because he realized at some point it had become her voice telling him this, her voice telling him just where to strike, where to turn the angle of his blade at just the right moment to bring it around in a glaring whiplash of chain lightning that would take Wuss' head off at the shoulders, spilling red-splashed blonde and creeping vine fingers of cheek tattoo in a pile of headless butcher's meat-

He had done it before. Because she told him to, because she had laughed at him when he didn't, and he couldn't stand it, he couldn't fucking _stand_ the derisive mocking she let drip from his mother's lips, that pretty bow curve of red that loved and hated and fucked and derided him.

Quistis' smile warmed that corner arc of stare he could see her out of, and suddenly the world cleared around him.

Suddenly, her voice was just distant memory in the dense fog that wrapped itself around everything that wasn't Quistis Trepe, and he let his scowl slip, let his fists unclench-

And it didn't matter anymore, because the laughter he could still hear wasn't his mother's anymore, and it unlocked his chest and let his heart breathe again.

He hadn't heard Quistis laugh like that in a long, long time. Maybe not since he'd chased Chicken Wuss down that vanishing horizon line of yellow waving the duct-taped tree branch of his knight's sword, because that little shit had rescued Quistis first from the spray of evergreen that formed the walls of tower that were her princess' jail cell.

"What'd I do?" Zell was still asking; he looked like the stupid little kid who'd cried when Seifer kicked sand into his eyes, sitting there with his hair ruffled into the unruly spike points of the hairdo he probably thought would get him laid, and suddenly, suddenly-

Seifer couldn't be mad at him anymore.

"Fuck." he snapped, and stalked off past Quistis, down the corridor and around the bend that carried him out of her sight.

* * *

><p>She found him twenty minutes later in the library, slumped over the dim glare of night-lit computer terminal, typing angrily. His finger hit each key with a click like machine gun rattle, and she watched him curse, backspace, and then re-enter his search query.<p>

"What are you looking at?"

He jumped, slamming his chair into the desk, and she smothered an amused smile. "Hyne fucking-stop doing that, Trepe!"

"Sorry. What are you looking at?" she asked again.

"Porn. I'm trying to burn the feel of Chicken Wuss' ass out of my fucking brain."

"Seifer, those computers are Garden property and aren't to be used-"

"Fuck, Instructor, I'm kidding."

She looked at the half-arch of smirk that was all she could see of his face, painted in the soft blue of monitor glow. "Oh."

"Need something?"

"No; nothing in particular."

"Then maybe you should get the fuck out."

Something inside of Quistis was apparently drawn to ill-mannered men; it had certainly been interested enough in Squall, hunched over in the back of her classroom trying not to meet anyone's eyes.

And so instead of going quietly away, as would probably have been in both their best interests, Quistis pulled out a chair, and seated herself across from him.

Seifer cocked an eyebrow.

She was thinking about Dr. Kadowaki, perusing his file with that look on her face, the appalled pity clench she had seen faces all around her go into as they bent over friends and comrades and instructors, sorting through the piles of their lap-held intestines and trying to reassure them everything would be all right. She had told herself she was not interested-Seifer Almasy had not been her concern for a very long time-and yet, there was a piece of her, the fraction of Quistis Trepe that was still the pig-tailed young girl practicing waltzes in the extension of beach she shared with his laughing green eyes, who wanted to know where boy Seifer had gone.

He'd left her alone on that stretch of sun-warmed gold, and part of her missed him.

It was easy to hate him, holding only part of the story. Maybe she had been lazy in not trying to be there for her old student when he returned to Garden-she'd given him a place in her classroom again and that was it-the rest she had left up to him, which of course was essentially the same thing as outright refusing him a sympathetic ear. Seifer would never make the first move.

But neither would he accept anything she could offer him, which locked them into a sort of eternal stalemate that Quistis didn't know how to break.

She reached into the pocket of the down-lined jacket she wore zipped tight up the middle, and came out holding a piece of candy wrapped in the ripped twist of its lint-dusted paper.

Seifer eyed it. "The hell is that?"

"Happy birthday." She set it down in front of him.

He narrowed his eyes at her, taking both hands off the keyboard.

"It's rootbeer candy; I stole it off Zell, actually. He's always carrying around all kinds of junk food. He won't miss it." She suddenly hesitated, abruptly, unexpectedly shy, her eyes taking the look on his face and trying to process it, trying to correspond it with all the myriad expressions that made up Seifer Almasy-this was one she didn't recognize, and it reminded her of his sleeping face, the face that was most like boy Seifer, manageable Seifer, and not this collection of bitter, damaged debris that used to be a blonde-haired child who could not stop grinning, could not stop laughing.

"I remembered that you used to like them. Back at the orphanage?" She let her last sentence curl into a question, because she still could not decipher the stare on his scarred face, and Quistis was starting to think she might have made a mistake.

Finally, he slid it into the palm of his hand, and pocketed it.

He didn't meet her eyes. "Thanks."

And then he went back to his surfing, presenting her with just the arc of profile that she could barely see in the shadowy room, a half moon flick of lash curve and the tilt of lip corner that looked like it might have been smiling, but probably wasn't.

She couldn't think of anything else to say; when they were children she'd always had plenty to tell him-how to color the lines of neutral drawing Matron presented them with on sheets of stiff copy paper, to stop teasing Zell, to tie his shoes just so, to stop tearing the heads off her dolls-

But this was not the same Seifer, not anymore, and she didn't know how to talk to this one.

She left his table and went to browse the shelves across the room, coming back in just a minute with a thick volume in one hand.

It was dusty and unread and scented with the lingering trace of mildew, and she brushed it off tenderly, smiling down as it cracked the ice floe she had carefully built around her damaged, grieving heart, and let in just a little sun ray of joy.

Her fingers knew the knurled raise of rough-cut binding, and they picked through pages with the familiarity of someone exploring a favorite book, and out of the corner of the eye she did not have trained on these pages she remembered so fondly, Quistis could see him watching her again.

She picked a passage and began to read, and it was not for some time that she realized he was looking over her shoulder, reading with her.

Seifer snorted. "What is this shit? 'To sea, to sea! The calm is o'er; the wanton water leaps in sport, and rattles down the pebbly shore; the dolphin wheels, the sea-cow snorts, and unseen mermaids' pearly song comes bubbling up, the weeds among. Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar: to sea, to sea! The calm is o'er.' The fuck does that even mean?"

"It's a book I found when I first came to Garden. It has some of my favorite poems in it."

"How can you read this shit?"

"Just because it doesn't have any pictures, doesn't mean it's not worth reading." she said coolly, turning a page.

He smirked. "The pictures can be a lot of fun to look at. You know, you weren't the only one who used to hang out here when you were a kid. I found some issues of Balamb Girls Gone Wild somebody stashed on one of the back shelves once when I was thirteen; it was the first time I'd ever seen tits."

"That's a beautiful memory." Quistis said dryly.

"Better than that crap." He indicated her book with a nod of his head.

"It reminds me of the lighthouse." she replied softly. "Matron used to read to us, remember? Poems and sometimes fairy tales-you always liked the ones where the prince rode off with the beautiful princess and lived happily ever after."

His face shut down, going into the cold killer stare of the man she'd watched throw Rinoa to Adel, and she realized she shouldn't have mentioned Edea.

The day she died, Quistis made herself watch, staring down executioner's blade chop and shivering hair tentacles and dangling strands of sawn-off nerve ending without blinking. She gripped the reins of her tight-clenched control in fingers of restraint that bled like her mother, slumping headless across the square cut platform of wood where they murdered her, but Seifer-

Seifer rushed the stage that held the final ending scene of her life, screaming.

Squall had cut him off mid-lunge, getting both arms around his waist, throwing him down in a linebacker tackle that stopped him short; it took four of them to hold him down, and she had watched his shrieks and bucks and the arcs of whiplash he threw his tear-stained face into with one hand over her mouth.

She could still taste the horror that curdled in her gut, solidified revulsion that never quite went away.

Kadowaki was right; the war had scarred more than the curve of white-speckled knuckle she could see, crosshatched in quarter moon slivers of old injury, and she had not bothered to care.

She had not known _how _to care; when he first came back to Garden, she had tried to-she had asked him politely about his day, subtly hinted that he might come to her if he needed to talk about something, anything, and he had blithely informed her that he was just fine, thank you very fucking much, and she could get her nose the fuck out of his business.

Maybe he had only reacted so because he could tell she was doing it for the child he had been, and not the man he became.

Seifer slid back around behind his computer, cracking his knuckles. They popped like gunshots, one after another, punctuations of sound in the silence that stretched for an eternity between them.

He put his boots up on the table.

"Seifer." She frowned at him.

He just looked at her.

Quistis sighed and page marked her book with a finger, pasting her teacher look across her face, the one she had caught Zell obliviously imitating once while she stood right behind him-Irvine had kept letting him go, kept letting him expand upon it, until the impersonation somehow degenerated in exaggerated air humping, and the shocked expletive he blurted when he realized she'd been watching the whole time.

Seifer ignored it. "Reading some pretentious asshole's attempt at sounding all fucking 'artsy' really makes you happy?" he demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Yes."

"Tch." he scoffed, leaning back.

"No one said you had to read it." she pointed out.

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'd rather kill myself."

Quistis rolled her eyes. "That's a rather dramatic reaction to a few lines of verse, isn't it?"

"Not really; I hate rhyming."

"How can you hate rhyming, Seifer?"

"Dunno. It just fills me with the kind of burning hatred that must store itself up inside of Wuss because his penis is so much smaller than average."

Quistis shook her head. "Please. Zell's penis has been an all-too-common topic of conversation recently."

"You were really afraid he was going to pull it out last night, weren't you?"

"It wouldn't be the first time it's happened." The first and last time she had decided to enter his dorm room unannounced, Quistis discovered Zell pants less and posing, snapping pictures with his phone; when she turned and ran, he'd chased her down the hallway with his pants around his ankles, screaming explanations about sending the images to Irvine as payback for something he had done earlier that day.

They had made it all the way to the training center before Zell realized he was half naked.

"It's not quite as…_insignificant _as you might like to believe."

"Fuck! I didn't need to know that."

Well, neither had Quistis, but she hadn't been provided much choice in the matter. When Selphie got wind of the event, she'd questioned Quistis extensively about very specific parts of it-namely, the very specific parts of Zell he'd hung out for all the world to see-and when a horrified Quistis pointed out that Selphie already had one to play with, her friend had given that charming little smile of hers and explained that while of course she was very happy with Irvine, all eight inches of him-another point Quistis had really not needed to know-it was always nice to know what else was out there. Especially since Quistis, Selphie had helpfully pointed out, was still single and had been so for far too long.

It got worse when Rinoa joined them, and Selphie decided that since they were on the topic, she would need to ferret out every little detail of the flourishing sex life between Garden's commander and his apparently well-sated sorceress: how big was it, how well did he use it, did he like this, did he like that-

For two such sweet-faced young women, they talked very graphically about things best kept private, if you asked Quistis.

"_Fuck_!" Seifer snapped, banging his hand down on his keyboard and jolting Quistis out of her reverie.

She closed her book. "What?"

"Some asshole just grabbed my Ifrit card."

"Are you playing online Triple Triad?" she asked with surprise. He did not really seem like the type for card games, but then she never would have pegged him for world domination, either; for a long time she had preferred to tell herself that he was all bark and no bite, and whether or not all of her had believed that, enough of Quistis had accepted it to keep trying with him.

"Yeah. Nothing else to do at 5:30 in the morning."

She checked her watch. "Hmm; I didn't realize it was so late already."

"Late? Are you fucking nuts? _Nobody _gets up at this time."

"I wake up at 4:00 most mornings."

"Fine; nobody fucking _sane _is awake at this time."

"You'd be surprised how invigorating it is to go for a run before anyone else is up. And it lets me accomplish a lot more."

Seifer laced his hands behind his head. "Well, you can do my part of the 'accomplishing' too, and I'll roll my ass out of bed at 8:00 with everybody else."

"Seifer, you've _never _gotten up with everybody else. I always had to send someone to drag you out of bed so you'd actually attend class." _That _had always been a fun assignment-prompting Seifer out of bed was a little like prodding a Ruby Dragon out of hibernation early; she had always had to promise her students extra privileges as motivation, and even then she suspected most of them had only done it because they were convinced those 'extra privileges' encompassed something involving her whip and the shiny pleather dominatrix outfit Selphie bought her last year as a joke. Quistis stood, arching her back in a stretch. "I'm going to go down to the cafeteria and see if breakfast is ready; there are a lot of injured cadets who won't be able to get it themselves. Want to come?"

"Yeah-'cause my nickname's Saint Seifer. No fucking thanks. I'm not feeding a bunch of pricks who'd rather bite my hand off than take anything out of it."

She couldn't formulate a logical argument to that.

"Fine. Good-bye, then."

She stopped in the doorway to look back over her shoulder at him, thinking about the duck tail of blonde that kicked up in back over the roll of his collar, remembering that a long, long time ago his hair used to do the same thing.

He hated it, if she recalled correctly, and she wondered why he kept it that way now.

Maybe because it had been Matron who snipped off that curl of soft gold and brushed the frayed end strands of its termination from the back of his neck.

She glanced back one more time before quietly leaving, nudging the door shut behind her with a soft click.

* * *

><p>He was just getting off the phone when a soft knock brought Squall's aching head up, and a moment later, Quistis' face poked around the corner through the narrow slit of opening she peeked through. "Hello."<p>

He hung up the phone, sighing.

"You look tired."

"Been on the phone for the last several hours." Squall told her, rubbing his scar. He gestured for her to sit, and she did so, perching in the chair she slid out across from him and crossing her legs elegantly. "I talked to my-Laguna, and it's done."

"Esthar is interfering in Garden politics?" Quistis asked, pursing her lips. If he hadn't been so completely enamored of Rinoa, he might have thought it was cute.

"Yeah." Laguna would walk naked through Trabia in the midst of its worst storm if his son requested it of him, but he did not mention that to Quistis. The twist of guilt that knotted and coiled and rolled over inside of him hurt enough without prodding it, and he didn't want to think about the kind of political snafu this would probably bring down on the man who'd never really been there for him. Didn't he owe Squall, after all? Every missed birthday, every neglected accomplishment-they all came together inside of him in a roiling cauldron of disappointment and the long-buried hurt of his pride, and that man had _never been there for him_, so why should he-

He resisted touching the raised edge of his forehead scar again; Quistis would know something was bothering him, and he didn't need any probing questions right now. His old instructor was far too perceptive.

"We've been talking back and forth all morning. He's threatened T. Garden with military force; he says their headmaster's agreed to stand down. We're supposed to be getting a signed cease fire order faxed over in the next hour or two."

"So it's over."

"Yeah."

She frowned. "This is going to bring up a lot of problems for Esthar."

"Yeah."

"And that doesn't bother you?"

"No other choice." he replied brusquely.

"I know." She sighed. "I do. Still…I suppose we'll just have to see what happens now. I've got Selphie and a few of our mechanics working on the heaters; she thinks they should be up and running again within the next couple of hours. They also had to repair one of the engines-it was damaged when Generator 3 went last night."

"How long is that going to take?"

"She isn't sure; as long as it takes, basically."

That wasn't the answer he wanted to hear, but he knew better than to push Selphie-the first, and coincidentally enough, last time he had informed her that her work was not up to his standards, she had forced him into menial Garden Festival tasks that were not at all unlike slave labor.

"How's Rinoa doing?"

"Sleeping. Very…worn out." His forehead creased as his thoughts wandered back to her, and the cold ovoid of too-pale marble that made up her face. Infinitely, eternally precious, it was the face that made all others fade back away into the patchy granite of Time Compression, and picturing it like he'd seen it last-colorless, joyless, that slash mark of troubled expression that did not belong on her flawless skin ruining her soft forehead-Squall felt something bleak and cold and dark wrap his heart in folds of dread that collapsed his chest. He was the soldier, the hired killer, and it was his hands, his red-tipped warrior's fingers that streamed the blood, the second guess eye blink of regret that you were murdering a sister, a friend, a brother-

Not her soft, soft sanctuary palms, the ones that cupped his face, his cheeks, the ones that put him back together again when he just couldn't do it anymore, when he couldn't swing again, fire again, kill again-

Quistis was wearing her I'm-here-to-talk-if-you-need-me look again, and he suppressed a sigh. He couldn't think about Rinoa right now, not with mountain towers of paperwork climbing his desk in increasingly precarious stacks that he kept expecting to take suicidal headers into his mug of cooling coffee at any moment. Zell and Irvine had started to take bets on how long he had left before being crushed to death underneath the avalanche slide of forms and requests and entry exams that were now his life.

To be Cid Kramer right now, retired in his lighthouse by the sea, Squall thought with a sigh.

Minus the executed wife and the corrugated edges of grief wound still knitting themselves back together, of course. He tried not to frown again; Quistis was still watching him, and he didn't have the time or patience for her sympathy right now.

"Laguna's hosting a ball in the Palace in a few weeks. He wants me and Rinoa there. He thinks getting her some positive publicity-showing she's harmless and whatever-will help. He said I could bring my friends."

"Are you going?"

He shrugged. "I said no at first; after what she had to do yesterday, anti-sorceress…tension will probably take a big jump. But I thought about it for a while and maybe…maybe he's right. But I want the rest of you there. Armed. I can't take any chances with her, Quistis." he said softly, looking down at his hands, knotted convulsively in front of that mug of stone cold beverage, the one Rinoa had bought him in a small shop in FH; embossed with a giant yellow smiley face trailing a speech bubble that cheerily proclaimed 'Have a Nice Day!,' he'd secretly hated it at first, but he'd used it all the same because to not do so would hurt her feelings, and now he'd sort of grown used to the ugly thing.

"I know, Squall. We'll keep her safe."

He took a deep breath. "Thanks."

She stood, her chair scraping on the floor tiles. "I've got a lot of paperwork to catch up on; if you don't need anything else…"

He shook his head.

"How many more did we…lose during the night?" he asked abruptly before she could leave, and he watched the brief twist of pain that distorted her features pass across her brow like summer storm cloud, and disappear just as rapidly.

She looked like his chest felt, and it was slowly killing him inside.

"Twenty. The ground was churned up enough the day before that we were able to bury most of them yesterday, but today everything was too hard, and we had to burn them."

He knew. He could see the red-orange hell glow of their funeral pyre from the flimsily patched square of window pane behind him.

He was looking down at his hands again when she quietly slipped out.

His mind kept showing him the coat flare and blade flash and peeled-back wolf's snarl that made up Seifer Almasy, kept making him watch the torn shoulder stitching of a double gash of red like blood weave and twirl and sidestep and up slash in the hurricane eye of battle that surged around and around him in an endless dancer's rotation of battlefield waltz. He watched that finger point of deadly steel gut and slice and behead, over and over and over again, and Squall knew that if he was being honest with himself, if he was taking the fastest and brightest and best with him to protect the woman he loved-

He would need Seifer Almasy.

It was not a realization he had wanted to come to, but there it was.

The real trick was figuring out how to get that prick to do him a favor. He cared about Rinoa only marginally more than he gave a shit about Squall-she'd been his first, a long time ago, but Squall doubted that meant much to his old nemesis judging by the way he paraded women through his bedroom and then right back out the door once he'd gotten what he wanted from them. Rinoa had probably been just another conquest to him, another notch on the belt he no doubt had needed to replace with another by the time he was eighteen.

Most people assumed Squall Leonhart cared about nothing beyond the intimate circle of Rinoa and the few friends he had cultured during the Second Sorceress War-it was why he slipped on his mask each morning, his thespian's masquerade of bored-with-it-all nonchalance, the trench wall of fortification he could layer between himself and the rest of the world.

Because he did care. Not about so-and-so's boyfriend leaving her for what's-her-face's-best-friend's-cousin and all the other ridiculous nonsense he couldn't believe people actually brought to him, but Cid had entrusted Garden to him, all its political undercurrents and wide-eyed new cadets and endless mountain ranges of paperwork, and _he had believed in him_. He had given over his life's work with a smile like the father's lopsided grin that Squall could remembered haloed in the dark fringe of summer sunshadow, and it had not been possible to _not _care anymore.

Sometimes, caring burned a hole in him like a dying star while he lay awake at night.

But he let the world go on believing he was the same teenaged cadet with the blasé eyes and the even more unmoved heart; the thing people always forgot was that those who said little observed a lot, and that was what he did behind the twist of overlong bang that Rinoa wouldn't let him cut-he waited and he watched and he judged, and lately, it seemed, the person he was scrutinizing most was Seifer Almasy.

His mind took him back to the piston hammer of his legs and the surf roar of the blood in his ears and that one long pinhole of tunnel that ended in Rinoa, taking him through dying SeeDs and stomped-down shit mud without seeing anything else, but at the last moment his mind had latched onto something, something significant that it wouldn't let him miss-

Seifer, running almost as hard as he, almost as frantic as he, sprinting up the long mountain slope of churned slush and guts and skull tops that would take him to Quistis.

Squall paired that with the looks he kept seeing Seifer take when he thought no one else was watching, and his quiet mind, his observer's mind showed him something else.

Seifer Almasy was desperately in love with Quistis Trepe.

He still wasn't sure whether to feel bemused or appalled about it.

Quistis did not know; probably no one did except him, maybe not even Seifer, and that was what he would need to use to save Rinoa.

He felt like a politician, keeping track of all the little secrets and scandals and pieces of rumor that were just true enough to work as leverage, but that was the ugly side of Garden, the side Cid had warned him about, the side that could bog you down even more than failed missions and lost SeeDs.

He could use Quistis as his messenger, make it sound like her idea, maybe subtly plant the idea that Quistis herself might be in danger-which was not entirely a lie, if reactions to Garden's black-haired little sorceress proved even less receptive than the worst case scenario that played on an endless loop inside his head.

Squall stared down into the beverage that hardened into a ring of black tar around the side of his mug, wondering if he liked the person he was having to become.

But this was for Rinoa, and if she wanted, if she needed him to, he'd burn his soul and his conscience and anything else he could pull up from the core of humanity that made up Squall Leonhart.

* * *

><p>Deling City<p>

Two Years Ago

Her smile pulled at him like nightmare.

He could see the clown-bright arch of it in the mirror she studied him from, painted in lipstick like whore's makeup, and when it curled, when it coiled like a snake, around his heart and his throat and his cramping gut, he remembered blood-

Spurting from hacked-off knuckle joint and sundered head stump, spitting red like gems, like the downpour of ruby that was the setting sun outside, and Seifer, he couldn't, he _couldn't_-

He couldn't breathe.

He loved her like the awareness of the oxygen that moved past his lips and into his lungs-instinctively, because he couldn't do anything else, and he hated her, he hated this fucking bitch, he hated, he _loathed _what she had done to his mother and his will that was hers to command now, hated her like he hated Leonhart, eating praise the way Seifer choked on admonition, and he hated her like he hated that blue-eyed little bitch, that sunny-haired _whore _who'd left him alone in a gravel drive empty of her laughter-

"How does mommy look?" she asked him, and he took a step forward, took a stumbling, shuffling half-fall forward, because this was Matron's voice she was using now, sweet-faced, tender-hearted Matron who fed him cookies and held his hand while the lightning shiver of his first immunization bee stung his arm.

She picked an elaborate chain up off her dresser, and motioned to him.

And he did it, he stopped at her shoulder like a dog, like a fucking _dog_, and when she handed him the necklace, he obediently slipped it around her slender white throat, and fastened the clasp for her.

"Seifer, how does mommy look?" she asked again.

He blinked. In the mirror above her head, his pale face hung like a ghost. "Pretty."

She pouted. "That didn't sound very convincing. Give mommy a kiss."

He leaned over the drape of cloth arranged in a fold of midnight heliotrope over her shoulder, and his lips brushed the arch of her throat, the column of satiny white that wrapped around to the knots of her spinal cord, and suddenly-

Suddenly, Seifer realized that he could break her neck. He could place one hand here, the other one there, in the sleeper's hold he'd learned at Garden, and with a crack like gunshot, he could snap the chain links of her backbone like cheap plastic, like shattering prison manacles-

And then she touched his chin, she grabbed his jaw, and suddenly his head jerked with a snap that made him wonder if it had been his spine instead, his folding vertebrae collapsing one by one by one, but it was not-just the agonized pop of stressed neck tendons, and now she loomed over him, she towered, and this was not Matron anymore, not the woman who bandaged knee scrapes and raced incoming sea tide for the seashells she collected for afternoon art projects.

He was already breathing hard when she crouched in front of him, and when that slender hand reached out to touch his chest, Seifer began to wheeze.

"Don't be afraid, Seifer. But mommy has to punish you, sweetie-you can understand that, can't you? When little boys are bad, they have to be punished. You shouldn't try to hurt mommy-it's not nice."

And then she pushed, and something like a blade made of flame tore through his solar plexus, through his heart, double skewering his lungs, and he screamed.

* * *

><p>Balamb Garden<p>

Trabia

Present Day

Seifer slumped over in front of dim-lit computer screen, and drummed his fingers against the tabletop.

He'd been sitting here for the last-he checked the clock on the wall; fuck, _five hours_-doing fuck all, swapping back and forth between screwing around on the terminal and snorting and guffawing his way through Trepe's book, which she'd left behind on the table next to him, and he supposed, he guessed he should probably find something useful to do with himself.

Like help burn the fuckers he could smell going up in the charred meat reek of blazing flesh that stung his nostrils even from here. Trepe must've forgotten a window when she was going around shutting everything back up again.

But he didn't move, he didn't twitch, and those fingers kept going, kept tapping, and he decided that if someone wanted his help, they could fucking well come ask for it.

He'd lost ten straight games of Triple Triad in a row to that asshole, anyway-the fuck kind of screen name was 'Lord Verdigris' anyway, douche-and aside from the rumbling in his stomach that indicated a need to find food, soon, he didn't feel any inclination to move from the chair they'd probably have to torch cut him out of in another couple of hours or so.

He was thinking about her, of course.

Quistis was not so much a random interloper into his thoughts now as she was a constant imposition, like the crazy cat lady of an old aunt who suddenly decides she's going to make your life a veritable hell by taking up residence in your extra guest bedroom. Shaking her presence was like trying to get rid of that dumb mutt of Rinoa's, the one that kept following him around with that lopsided grin and that tentative sweep of wagging tail that sent most other people into spasms of squealing joy like the dog had just done something fucking miraculous.

He did not fucking need this. He did not fucking _want _this; women were tits and an ass and a hole for his dick-they were not steel bands of longing, winched down tight over the unstable cracks Ultimecia had put in his chest, the ones that kept threatening to burst open like the maggot-eaten rot of an old corpse, and they were not memories of children's laughter, and a hole inside him like a dying star because he rarely heard her let go like that anymore.

And they certainly weren't Quistis Trepe, Instructor Trepe, goddamned little Quisty, racing him down the beach outside his mother's house, his mother's empty, barren home by the sea, by the fireworks that went off like a spray of meteor scatter-

Seifer stared down at the book she'd left behind.

It looked like the one Matron used to read to him from, the one she spun her fairy tales of rescued maidens and vanquished dragons and triumphant heroes from, the one with the happy endings, the one where villains like him got what was coming to them.

The one she'd used to fill his head with his knight's dreams of glory, those fantastical orphan's aspirations of lowering sunset and grateful maiden kisses.

But that wasn't the way it really worked, was it?

Sometimes heroes shattered, and the brittle splinters re-shaped themselves into those closet-hid monsters boy Seifer used to lay awake waiting for.

Sometimes, the grateful maiden was a fucking cunt who raped your soul and bled you dry, until all that was left was the putrid drought of the humanity you used to hide like it was something to be fucking ashamed of. Because you didn't know, you _could not _know that there were worse things than insignificant little pimply teenagers suspecting you were not quite as tough as you pretended to be, and you did not know there were worse things than the hallucinatory shadow loom of childhood demons.

You did not know, you had never even guessed, never even _imagined _that the worse things-

They were hiding right inside of you, all along.

Seifer knew that now. He knew it each morning he stood in front of his bathroom mirror, staring himself down like that square cut piece of ordinary glass could somehow tell him that it was just him looking back, just Seifer Almasy and not the fragments of her that he sometimes suspected were still there, leaking slow poison into his heart.

The squawk of Garden's P.A. system cut into his brooding, and Leonhart's prissy, constipated voice came over the speakers.

"Everyone…this is Squall. T. Garden has just agreed to a cease fire…so it's all over now. I…uh, think we should have a moment of silence for those we lost."

Seifer smirked. At least no one could accuse Pubes of letting someone else write his speeches. Public speaking came about as naturally to him as dating women came to Chicken Wuss, Garden's oldest virgin.

"Uh…thanks." That was his brilliant ending, and then the announcement cut with a screech like glass across his ear drums, and Seifer tipped his chair back down onto all four legs once more.

He stretched as he stood, getting the kinks out of his back, his eyes going into a slow drift skid that took them back to that spine-worn hardback splayed open across the table.

_-for this princess was the most beautiful princess in the kingdom-_

_-and he slew the evil magician with his sword, setting his love free-_

_-and they lived happily ever after-_

_-they lived happily ever after seifer, didn't you like that-_

He picked it up in hands that shook, just a little, and then he tucked it securely under one arm and left.

* * *

><p>It took the better part of a week for Selphie and her mechanics to get Garden up and running again. They kept running into problems, not least of which was Trabia's extreme climate, freezing pistons and crankshafts and the gibberish stream of technical jargon that went right over Quistis' head, but now, at last, Garden was operational again, heading back toward Balamb, back toward temperate spring breeze and new growth flower bouquets, curled into the tight bud of early picked roses. Zell always bought them for her when the vendor stalls in Balamb's Sunday market first began displaying them in fantastical rainbows of new life, hanging in artistic sprays from counter corners and stall roofs. She was tired of achromatic snow knoll; it would be nice to arrange them in a burst of color on her desk next to her computer.<p>

Quistis smiled thinking about him; he was going to make someone a wonderful, thoughtful boyfriend one day-if he ever worked up the courage to actually approach someone of the opposite sex who wasn't basically a long-lost sister, anyway.

She slid the page she'd just accidentally crumpled out from underneath her hand. She'd spent the better part of the week catching up on paperwork, the neatly-organized stacks towering higher than her head in some places; classes had not stopped for the most part, not when they were in desperate need of new SeeDs, and in between battles Garden carried on mostly as per usual, with the slight addition that her students now showed up for class armed. Consequently, ungraded assignments and training center access requests kept coming, kept piling up, while she spent most of her free time strategizing with Squall and not attending to her usual instructor duties.

She was paying for it now, with three hours of endless, robotic grading and about four cups of coffee.

Her hand was starting to cramp; Quistis set down her pen and flexed her fingers experimentally, wondering if they were permanently molded into the shape she had formed around her ballpoint for the past several hours.

She swiveled around to her computer terminal with her coffee mug in one hand, taking a sip as she booted it up. A quick run-through of her e-mail would be a sufficient break-maybe Irvine had sent her an interesting forward-and then she'd get back to work.

Quistis tipped her head to one side and popped her neck, grimacing. Maybe an e-mail break and a brisk walk around the floor, to stretch all the cricks out of her aching body.

She logged in quickly, typing one-handed with the smooth efficiency of long practice.

_Welcome Quistis Trepe! You have 342 new e-mails. _

She sighed; this was her respite?

Quistis scrolled down rapidly, deleting anything that looked like junk mail-Hyne her filters were worthless-which took care of the vast majority of them, keeping just the e-mails that looked legitimate. There was one from Zell containing a joke that introduced a flush of embarrassed heat into her cheeks-he was downright ribald sometimes-and several that looked suspiciously like Trepie love letters. She clicked on one that confirmed her suspicions-Hyne, why did they have to wrote poetry, and why wasn't there a single decent lyricist among them-then moved on to the next, a pleading marriage proposal that was, ironically, anonymous. Her would-be suitor 'couldn't live without the beautiful blue beautifulness of her eyes any longer' and promised to quit Garden if she accepted his offer so he could give her the life she deserved. His plan (or hers, perhaps, it was anonymous, after all,) was to patent the Chocobo-flavored candy bar they had recently invented which would, apparently, make them very rich and provide them with all the money they needed to support the lifestyle Quistis was, apparently, supposed to be enjoying.

She shook her head, clicked on the next, and suddenly sat up.

Interesting. This was not the usual Trepie correspondence, punctuated with typos and rhymes that made Zell's worst attempts look positively brilliant, and she wondered curiously who had sent it.

_To: Quistis_Trepe_14 (quistis_trepe_)_

_From: 3877SA ()_

_Subject: (No subject)_

_It was many and many a year ago,_

_In a kingdom by the sea,_

_That a maiden there lived whom you may know_

_By the name of Annabel Lee;_

_And this maiden she lived with no other thought_

_Than to love and be loved by me._

_I was a child and she was a child,_

_In this kingdom by the sea;_

_But we loved with a love that was more than love-_

_I and my Annabel Lee;_

_With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven_

_Coveted her and me._

_And this was the reason that, long ago,_

_In this kingdom by the sea,_

_A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling_

_My beautiful Annabel Lee;_

_So that her highborn kinsman came_

_And bore her away from me, _

_To shut her up in a sepulchre_

_In this kingdom by the sea._

_The angels, not half so happy in heaven,_

_Went envying her and me-_

_Yes!-that was the reason (as all men know,_

_In this kingdom by the sea)_

_That the wind came out of the cloud by night,_

_Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee._

_But our love it was stronger by far than the love_

_Of those who were older than we-_

_Of many far wiser than we-_

_And neither the angels in heaven above,_

_Nor the demons down under the sea,_

_Can ever dissever my soul from the soul_

_Of the beautiful Annabel Lee._

_For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams_

_Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;_

_And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes_

_Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;_

_And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side_

_Of my darling-my darling-my life and my bride,_

_In the sepulchre there by the sea,_

_In her tomb by the sounding sea._

She read it with her chin in her hand, smiling. She'd first discovered it in that dusty old tome she'd re-visited today, back-shelved in Garden's library and unopened for years. It was a pretty whim, eternal love that kept going, kept living even when the heart stopped measuring out each harmonious beat to the rhythm of the only other pulse that mattered, and eleven-year-old Quistis, quiet, studious, practical little Quistis Trepe memorized it carefully, remembering her own kingdom by the sea.

And then Shiva took it all away, year by year, splinter of memory by piece of recollection, until she had just a few lines of verse left, interspersed with the flashes of blue sky and yellow beach that had not made any sense to her for a very long time.

Who would have known to send this to her? Zell perhaps-she'd shown him the book once and pointed out some of her favorite poems, 'Annabel Lee' among them, and maybe he'd stored that at the back of his mind and sent it as a little pick-me-up. Hyne knew they could all use one about now. He hadn't seemed much interested in it, though-his response, if she remembered correctly, had been something along the lines of a distracted 'That's great, Quisty!' and then an immediate return to the weapons manual he'd been perusing. And he hadn't sent it from his account, which didn't make any sense if it was him; there wasn't any need to remain anonymous.

Seifer was the only other one who knew about the book, and the idea of him sending it wasn't even a remote possibility.

Well, she certainly wasn't any stranger to secret admirers; this one would just have to remain a mystery a while longer.

The door to her classroom opened, and she spun around in her chair in time to see Zell poke his head through. "Hey Quisty; brought ya' some breakfast; figured ya' hadn't eaten yet."

He trotted across the room to her, and dropped a bag that smelled questionably of cinnamon roll in front of Quistis, on top of the last stack of paper she had been sorting through. He was right, and her stomach reminded Quistis with a sudden angry rumble, although she wasn't entirely sure if that was because it was hungry, or just launching an irate protest to the sticky, flavorless lump of brown with the strange aftertaste that was supposed to-she assumed anyway-mimic the pastry Garden's cafeteria had modeled it after.

"Thank you, Zell."

"Hey, Selphie says she needs your help setting up for the party downstairs."

Quistis sighed. Selphie and the rest of the Garden Festival Committee had decided that celebrating the cease fire between T. Garden and B. Garden with a stage performance and then a student dance was the best possible way to get everyone's spirits up again. Quistis didn't deny that the altogether subdued student body needed something, but Selphie's parties had somewhat of a reputation for going spectacularly awry. The last one had featured a stage play with Zell dressed as a Chocobo and Irvine as his faithful rider, a tragedy about one man and one Chocobo who came to love one another, and Quistis could still remember Irvine crouched over the feebly kicking chicken feet that signaled the last death spasms of Zell the Chocobo, dying of some incurable disease while Irvine sobbed unconvincingly over him. She'd just found the whole thing mildly disturbing and unintentionally amusing, but next to her, Selphie-no doubt the playwright-cried noisily into Irvine's handkerchief throughout the whole thing, and around her others did the same, albeit less deafeningly.

Zell, half-blind inside his awkward costume, stumbled off-stage during their final bows and landed across the front row, flipping the chair he hit and spinning it sideways into the one next to it; the accident continued from there into a chain reaction of collapsing chairs and screaming cadets, and half the audience ended up in Dr. Kadowaki's infirmary with relatively minor injuries aside from the occasional mild concussion and one broken leg.

Needless to say, Cid had not been very pleased at the time.

She left her cinnamon roll and followed Zell outside, keeping pace with him as he jogged, his cheek tattoo twitching into the occasional greeting smile he gave to the cadets they passed that he knew. It took them a good fifteen minutes to reach the staging area; he kept stopping to talk to people, and Quistis marveled again at the ease with which he conversed and joked and bear-hugged near strangers, when merely looking at attractive members of the opposite sex often sent him into spasms of red-faced panic and unintelligible stuttering.

"You're late, Zelly!" Selphie barked as they approached her through the throng of Festival volunteers running frantically back and forth, a miniature drill instructor in fluffy yellow faux fur, gripping her clipboard like it was a weapon she wasn't afraid to use.

"Sorry, Selph!" He clicked his heels together in a crisp parade rest stance, saluting her. "Zell Dincht, reporting for duty, ma'am."

Selphie pointed her pencil threateningly at him. "Get dressed!"

He scurried off to do just that, looking back over his shoulder at Quistis, the repentant look on his face raising her hackles. "Sorry, Quisty!"

"What did you need me for, Selphie?" she asked warily, crossing her arms as she glanced around the chaos storm of sprinting cadets and in-filtering audience members, thinking vaguely that it wasn't entirely unlike the battle they'd all just survived.

"Nothing, Quisty!" she sing-songed brightly, marking something down on the sheet clipped to her board. "I just knew you probably wouldn't come if I didn't send someone to get you. You were just going to spend all day shut up in that stuffy, smelly old classroom grading papers, and I knew you wouldn't want to miss this. Have a seat!" She bounced off toward the stage, screaming 'Right stage, princess tower-move!' at the top of her lungs.

Quistis exhaled in resignation, and did as she was told.

Almost twenty minutes later, the lights dimmed and an expectant hush fell over the chattering audience.

Someone-Selphie or one of her slavish Festival Committee minions, probably the latter-had tacked up frilly pink curtains, and they swished open now in a dramatic flourish of jester's cape swirl, revealing Irvine, leaning forlornly on the painted cardboard that formed the silhouette of his tower.

He was wearing the cylindrical pink cone of the hats Selphie used to make at the orphanage, the ones she and Quistis had forced the boys to don when they were tired of admiring themselves in Matron's dresser mirror, and a long red wig that ran like open flame down his back.

Oh Hyne. She pushed the heel of her hand into her eyes, trying not to laugh.

Zell zipped across the stage on his T-board, braking to a graceful halt at the foot of the tower. The cape he wore around his broad shoulders fluttered in a ripple wake of undulating green behind him, and he snapped it dramatically around behind him, standing with his hands on his hips in what Quistis assumed was supposed to be some sort of heroic pose.

"Hello, fair maiden! What pray tell are youeth doing in yon tower?"

Irvine sighed and draped the back of his hand across his forehead. "Oh handsome prince," he called out in a ridiculous falsetto that forced Quistis to quickly cover up a strangled snort, "I am trapped here, by a horrible, evil monster! He has three heads and a gun blade for a tail, and knight after knight has tried to rescue me, but all have perished at the claws of this terrible beast! I fear I am lost forever and shall never see my poor father the king ever again!"

"I'll save you! Uh, I mean-I, Prince Delightful shall rescue youeth from yon tower and horrible, evil monster-he will never stand against the might of my swordeth!"

Quistis buried her smile in her palm. Their acting was atrocious.

Something entered from stage left with a boom that shook the stage, shivering the floorboards under Zell's feet, and on rumbled some poor volunteer wearing a hefty costume that appeared to be some disturbing cross breed of Ruby Dragon and deformed Chocobo. Behind it trailed another cadet, crouched down behind it holding the gun blade that served as its tail, twitching it back and forth behind the creature as it lumbered forward-and oh, Hyne, that looked like it might be…_Lionheart_? She didn't know how Selphie possibly could have separated Squall from his weapon, but if it was indeed his gun blade, she hoped for her friend's sake that he wouldn't discover what sort of use it had been put to.

Zell pulled his sword, a fusion of duct tape and sturdy cardboard that looked almost convincing.

"Rahr." the creature wheezed.

Irvine put a hand to his mouth and let out as high-pitched a scream as he could manage, which, admittedly, was rather impressively strident.

Someone took the empty seat next to her.

"Does Messenger Girl have a fuckin' kiosk or something where I can buy stuff to throw at this shit?"

Quistis smiled thinly. "She has a door you can leave through if you don't like it."

"Tch." He slumped down in his chair, slinging his arm casually across the back of hers.

She glanced up at his scarred profile, thinking how much he looked like Squall from this angle, with just the half curve of ruined tissue visible through the strand of hair fluttering down over it. "What are you doing here?"

"Trying to kill Wuss with just the power of my mind." he replied almost cheerfully, shifting into a more comfortable position.

"Seifer."

His scar crinkled in a frown. "The Training Center logs are off-the weapons check-out ones."

"Disparities are fairly common, Seifer; cadets forget to mark down which weapons they borrowed, or whether they even borrowed any at all. It happens a lot."

"No, they're off by a fucking _lot_-someone went through and wiped out most of what was there and didn't mark any of it down."

On-stage, Zell tripped over his cloak and fell, almost impaling himself on his sword.

"How many weapons are missing?" Quistis asked, raising both eyebrows.

"Fifty."

"_Fifty_?" Her eyebrows climbed higher.

Irvine leaned too enthusiastically on his tower window, and the entire thing gave suddenly with a loud tearing sound, flipping him through disintegrating cardboard and face first down onto the stage with a loud thud, his dress bunching up around his exposed butt.

Seifer grabbed her hand, and used it to cover his eyes.

At least he'd been wearing underwear.

She pulled her hand back from his face. "Did you tell Squall about this?"

"Yeah-we had lunch together today. I told him all about it, we talked about our feelings for a while, and then I sucked his dick."

Quistis rolled her eyes. "He needs to know that the logs are off by that much."

"Why do you think I told you? The last time I went into Pubes' office, he gave me a fucking black eye and I almost threw him out the window."

She remembered. He was right-it was probably better if she acted as an intermediary, taking the information to Garden's commander herself.

"All right; if Selphie asks, I had to go take care of something important."

"You think I'm staying _here_?" he demanded, standing up as she did, looming over her the same way he had as a child, staring down into her tear-smeared face and the wave-chewed remains of her tide-ruined sandcastles. "I'd rather fellate barbed wire."

"Charming. It's no wonder you did so well in my classes, with all the time spent thinking up witty rejoinders like that."

He walked with her to the exit. "Sarcasm, Instructor-that hurts."

"If it really hurt that much, you'd have been a better student-it might have given you some motivation."

Seifer smirked as he held the door open for her. "This is foreplay for you, isn't it?"

"Yes; up next: my whip, and any appendage of yours it can fit around."

"There's fuckin' barbs in that thing, you know."

"Mmm." she hummed in agreement. "That won't be a problem, will it?"

"Maybe not if you let me put it in your-"

She nudged his arm as she passed, just enough to skid his hand off the door, and it slammed in his face, staggering him backward with the blow.

He came through after her cursing and holding his nose. "Fuck, Trepe, you just broke my face!"

The women of Garden would revolt against her if she'd permanently ruined it. Cantankerous ex-revolutionary though he may be, he was still, she could reluctantly admit, attractive enough to stop women old enough to know better in their tracks.

Remembering something, Quistis sighed. She needed a favor from him, rendering the apology she didn't want to give absolutely necessary. "Sorry. Here, let me look at it."

"Shit no." he snapped, glaring at her over the protective mold he made of his hands, cupped defensively over his nose.

She yanked his hands away anyway, enduring a brief tug-of-war that ended when he abruptly stopped resisting; her stubbornly-braced pull catapulted Seifer toward her, straight into her arms, reeling them both up against the wall in an awkwardly tangled embrace that smashed the scratchy stubble of his unshaved cheek up against hers.

He was smiling when she carefully disentangled herself, and Quistis knew he had planned that.

"You're not even bleeding." she pointed out somewhat irritably, straightening her clothes. He looked pleased with himself, which at least meant he probably wasn't mad anymore, and might be slightly more receptive to her coming request.

"Squall's father is hosting a delegation ball in Esthar in a couple of weeks."

"I hope Pubes chokes to death on an hors d'oeuvre." Seifer replied sincerely.

"Laguna suggested that Rinoa attend as well, to build up a little positive publicity for sorceresses. He thought it might help the public to see that she's just a normal young woman, and not the threat they seem to believe she is." Quistis said, choosing to ignore that. "The rest of us-Zell, Irvine, Selphie and myself-are going as well to keep an eye on everything. Squall thought you would make a valuable addition to the team."

"Pubes said _that_?"

_Not in so many words. _It had actually been a far less complimentary explanation about how much Seifer liked killing stuff that Squall had fed her, but she didn't mention that. He was right in that Rinoa's chances improved exponentially when she was guarded by two of the most talented gun blade masters Garden had ever put out, regardless of how he worded it. For her, Squall would have humbled himself in front of his long-time nemesis without protest, but he'd rightly assumed that wouldn't have done any good, and sent Quistis instead. Why he thought she would have any better luck persuading Seifer, she didn't pretend to guess.

"It would just be a basic bodyguard mission; nothing too complicated." She hoped, anyway.

"Will you let me pick what you're going to wear?" he asked as they walked down the hall together, passing cadets giving them a wide berth.

"No."

"Hmm." Seifer pretended to think about it. "Then no." He walked off without another word, leaving her alone in the corridor, her head beginning to pound.

Well, that had gone about just as well as she had predicted.

**A/N: The poem Seifer reads out of Quistis' book in the library is an excerpt from 'To Sea! To Sea!' by Thomas Lovell Beddoes, and the poem she gets in her e-mail was of course not written by me, either. It is 'Annabel Lee' by Edgar Allen Poe. Thanks for reading! Reviews are always appreciated.**


	6. Chapter 4

**A/N: So this chapter was supposed to go up yesterday, sometime in the afternoon...and that clearly didn't happen. So here's a little about my life you probably really don't care about: I'm house sitting for my parents and taking care of their animals (my parents have a small farm-no big livestock or anything, but there are about 100 chickens, several cats, dogs, and a bunch of alpacas, which look like miniature llamas if you've never seen them before,) and yesterday while I'm out there feeding everyone...I look up and there is this huge column of smoke out in the gameland next to my parents' house. Which is full of dry, flammable stuff. And it's heading my way. Shit. So I call both my parents' cells to try and inform them of what is going on and to see what kind of shit they want me to grab from the house if it comes down to that, and both are turned off. I then try the number they left for the phone up at their property where they are vacationing, and I get a message that the number I dialed does not exist. Fuck me. At this point, I am fucking pissed because the fire is coming closer and I have no way to contact my parents, and I'm trying to figure out how in the hell I can get the dogs off the property (the rest of the animals were going to have their gates opened and just have to figure out how to get the hell out of the way themselves, but I'm a big dog person and I was NOT leaving my puppies behind,) since one of them is roughly the size of a polar bear and I have a Plymouth, which is NOT a car capable of carrying anything remotely resembling a polar bear. I have to call my boyfriend-who used to be a firefighter-and try and describe it to him so he can try and determine whether it looks like it's under control or not. He ended up coming out with a friend, and luckily by that time someone must have gotten out there and hit it with something big, because most of the smoke was clearing out, although we soaked the fields down anyway just in case. Then I get home, in a shitty mood, and decided what the hell I'll upload this anyway since this chapter has been ready to go for a while, and I keep getting hit with constant time-out errors from this site everytime I try to upload it. I tried for a good half hour, restarting my computer, shutting everything down, re-starting the internet, etc., thinking maybe the problem was on my end because my internet had been acting up a bit, but no. So yeah. Needless to say yesterday was not a happy day for me. Leave pity reviews or something; it's like pity sex except you don't feel like a slut in the morning. **

**Chapter Four**

Presidential Palace

Esthar

Two Weeks Later

Man, these things bored the crap out of him.

Zell took a quick look around the throng of milling politicians and their surgically-enhanced arm candy, then surreptitiously put his feet up on the immaculate white tablecloth decorating the table in front of him in precisely-draped folds.

Across the room, Quistis put her hands on both hips and stared malevolently at him.

Ah, shit.

He dropped them.

Standing off to her right, Irvine raised the puff of insubstantial cream and flour that amounted to what these tight ass snobs considered a snack in an acknowledging salute, and moved off through the crowd with her. He looked strange without his hat, and in a tuxedo no less, his hair tied neatly back, leaving just a few premeditated strands hanging down in accenting pieces of pomade-slick brown.

At least he wore his outfit with the same ease he exuded strutting around in his usual long coat and hat, though; Squall looked like someone had punched him in the nut sack and he was now trying not to puke.

Oddest of all, however, was Seifer Almasy. He was standing in a corner with his arms folded across the painstakingly-pressed jacket top he wore open across a white button-up, scowling at anything that dared even glance his way, and Zell wondered again what the hell he was doing here.

He wasn't enjoying himself, that was for sure.

Seifer caught him looking and flipped him off; an older woman standing nearby gave him a horrified look and turned away, probably wondering who had made the gauche mistake of inviting such barbarians.

She'd shit herself a few bricks if she knew it was President Loire himself, eh? Zell smiled thinking about that, reaching into his pocket and slipping his phone out to check the time. How much longer did Squall expect them to hang out here, exchanging fake smiles with ass kissing little weasels who wouldn't know real food if it bit them in the ass? Where were the hot dogs anyway, for Hyne's sake? Didn't these people know their serving sizes were far, far too small? A guy could starve to death at a party like this, and in fact Zell was so close to doing just that he was starting to eye the tablecloth, wondering how it would go down with a little mustard.

If they even had mustard in a place like this.

He flipped his phone open.

A woman in front of him bent over to retrieve the purse she had just dropped, the bottom of her lacy black panties and a curve of spray-tanned ass cheek hanging out of her too-short dress, and Zell covertly snapped a picture with his phone.

Someone reached over the top of his head and snatched the phone from his hands, and a spear of panic like a knife iced through him.

Oh shit shit shit-if that was Quisty he was going to be spitting balls for the next week-

But when he looked up, Zell found green eyes and not blue narrowed down at him, green eyes under an arc of blonde like sun ray, and he relaxed marginally. Just that asshole Almasy.

He was examining the picture closely, tilting it back and forth like it was some kind of complex invention that he couldn't quite figure out, and Zell made a swipe for it. "Give it back."

The taller man held it out of his reach, smirking.

"Screw you, Almasy! Give it back, you bastard!" Zell snapped, standing on his chair and making a lunge for it; Seifer slapped a palm up against his face, completely obscuring his sight, and he swung blindly back and forth with the vague hope of hitting something vital-Almasy's balls, for instance…

"Zell, get down!" a voice hissed at him. He felt Seifer go stiff, and his bowel's snarled themselves into a tangled rat's nest. That was Quisty for sure this time, and-he checked over Seifer's shoulder-she looked _really _pissed.

Uh oh.

He dropped down into his chair with a loud smack, folding his hands in his lap and doing his best Angelo impression; that dog had a pitiful look that could make Zell at his hungriest part with his last hot dog-

Seifer spun around with the phone in his hand. "Why, hello, Instructor, what a pleasure to see you."

She reached for it as his finger hit the center button, and the crisp shutter click of a camera going off echoed in the space between them.

Quistis confiscated it, her mouth thinning as she studied the picture he'd just taken.

"What'd he take a picture of?" Zell asked timidly, curious despite himself.

"My breasts."

"Which look very nice tonight, Instructor."

"Hey, perv! You can't treat Quisty like that! Want me to beat him for you, Quisty?"

"Fuck off, Wuss."

"Seifer isn't the only one who needs to focus on the job we're here for, Zell." she said with one eyebrow raised, showing him the picture he'd snapped before she briskly deleted it.

Zell felt himself turn bright red. Oops. She'd noticed that, then.

"There's nothing going on, except a bunch of snobby fucks eating shit I wouldn't eat if Chicken Wuss and Pubes threatened to tag team me."

Quistis tucked Zell's phone into the little clutch she carried, sprinkled in the ephemeral dust of sequins color-coordinated to the gown Rinoa had cheerfully forced her to wear. It matched Seifer's eyes, actually, Zell noticed idly-hard-glittering jade and shining gold, paired next to one another like they were meant for each other, and Zell thought uncomfortably how sort of…nice they actually looked together.

He didn't say that aloud. Quistis' fingers were already going in the drum roll cadence of the gesture that indicated her patience was fraying thin, and he didn't want to turn the attention she seemed to have directed on Seifer for the moment back to him. Call him a coward, but if someone had to lose their boy parts tonight, he'd much rather it was Almasy.

"How much longer is this fuckin' thing supposed to last?" Almasy was asking, his forehead creasing severely across the livid trench mark of his scar.

"Probably another couple of hours. I think Squall's about ready to leave, though."

Zell snorted. "Squall's _been _ready to leave since we got here."

"Finally that prick and I have something in common."

"Hey, fuck you, Almasy-Squall's worth-"

"Please." Quistis interrupted, putting up her hand. "Do not start, Zell. Just circulate, all right? Make sure you don't see anything suspicious. Go find Irvine; the two of you can give the party a final round before we leave."

He scowled at Almasy, still wearing the little smirk across his lips that Zell was tempted to wipe right the hell off his face-

But not with Quisty standing there, staring down her nose disapprovingly at him.

"Fine." he sulked, getting up and pushing his chair in.

He waited until she'd shifted her gaze away before sneakily giving Almasy the finger, and then he took off into the crowd, letting it swell and build around him until Seifer's beady little eyes couldn't find him anymore.

* * *

><p>His back fucking itched.<p>

Seifer unknotted his tie with a scowl, letting it hang undone around his neck, his jacket already off now and draped across the back of a nearby chair. Trepe would yell at him if she spotted him-the white shirt he was wearing wasn't exactly conducive to hiding Hyperion, strapped across his back underneath his clothes in a complex harness that Selphie's costume-designing skills had come in handy with-but his back was to the wall anyway, so fuck her if she wanted to jump up his ass. No one could see the damn thing.

He let his eyes sweep the mingling crowd, trying to decide if he'd ever seen a bigger group of pretentious swinging dicks all gathered together in one spot. Probably not, but he didn't want to jinx himself by deciding that this was the low point of his life-and he was including being mind fucked by Ultimecia in that assessment.

Why the fuck was he here again, anyway?

Oh, right; because Quistis had asked him and he was a fucking fag now who'd lost his balls to the completely oblivious vice grip of her hand, the same one that was fisted inside his chest now, around his heart and his lungs as he watched her talk to Irvine with that smile on her face.

She had a smile for everyone but him. Pubes and the cowboy and even fucking Chicken Wuss-they all got the soft little lip quirk any Trepie would have given his left nut for, and pathetic, cringing_-he cowered like a dog because his mother's hand was reaching for him again, and he didn't want it, he didn't _want _it-_desperate little _fuck _that he was, Seifer wanted one too.

About time for him to slit his wrists, wasn't it, sniveling little emo that he'd become?

He glowered at some overly made-up bitch eyeing him like she was thinking of approaching, and she turned a hurried about face that took her in the opposite direction. Two years ago, he'd have had her bent over one of the men's room urinals railing her like his dick was a bat and her vagina was Chicken Wuss' face, but tonight-tonight-

He just didn't fucking feel like it. He hadn't felt like it in a very long time, not since-_his mother's fingers brushed his hair and his cheek and lower down, far lower down, her other hand slid around the shaft he was horrified to feel twitch in response, and the part of him that was still her son and not her slave whimpered, and crawled for the cover of the safe sanctuary his mind carefully built for boy Seifer_-

Seifer rubbed his eyes.

The fuck were Leonhart and his princess? There was Laguna, Leonhart's bumbling fuck of an absent father, shaking hands near the front of the room and smiling, his white, white teeth catching the light in a flash like falling star, like prismatic firework downpour-

_-pretty huh seifer help me build another sandcastle ok-_

He blinked, and suddenly he realized the flash wasn't President Loire's bleached teeth-that was fucking _metal _and not professionally treated dental bone, and he had the nub of gun blade handle that just barely poked free of his collar in his hand before he could even think about what he was doing.

The stealthy slide of snub-nosed gun barrel caught the light again where it slithered out from beneath the blinding white of the identical tablecloths embellishing each table, and Seifer leaped.

He killed the would-be assassin with a thrust that opened a fist-sized hole through the side of his head, but not before he got off a shot that echoed like long range artillery in the room, one standout drum boom of a note in the startled symphony of shrieks that suddenly erupted.

* * *

><p>The furnace heat of his love for his son spread like a galaxy in his chest.<p>

It was that wide, that encompassing, and it made the room swim before his eyes, just a little as he watched his child smile down at Rinoa's pretty face with his wife's gentle lips.

He put his hands in his pockets. _Raine, our son is a hero._

Their son was a hero, and Laguna didn't even know how to talk to him. If he could just _reach _him, just penetrate that barrier layer of ice Squall threw up between them every time he tried to initiate contact, every time he just tried to be the father Squall had never gotten to know-

But he didn't want that, did he? He had his family already, his tight-knit circle of Liberi Fatali, and Rinoa, pretty, sweet little Rinoa, smiling back at his son the way Raine used to smile at him.

Sometimes, his wife's death still gut punched him so hard it brought tears to his eyes, and he absently twisted the wedding band he still wore.

He tried to be happy that his son had found someone, someone like Raine, someone who would ground him and nurture him and find the smile he wore too little, but all he really felt, deep down-

All he could really find, when he dug for the happiness he kept telling himself was there somewhere, was echoic loneliness, continuing on like an empty well.

That was how he felt, looking at his son. Blank and bleak, and failed.

Because that was what he had done with Squall, always, disappointing his son over and over again with his parental ineptness, with the valiant image orphan Squall had fixed in his mind, the faceless hero that his bumbling, idiot father, his _real _father, could never quite live up to.

Laguna shook hands blindly, smiling his politician's smile, his counterfeit smile, watching his son over the shoulders of ambassadors and governors and mayors, all the simpering, ass kissing artificiality that made up his world now.

The explosion that broke his world slammed strands of chandelier glass together in the wind chime soundtrack that was the last he heard.

Something hit him in the chest, hard, and he went down seeing his son, his precious baby son, swaddled in his mother's arms and looking up at nothing because he wasn't there-he wasn't there, he had _never been there, oh Hyne Raine, he _hadn't known-and then Laguna lost his hold on his son and his balance and his life, and he fell forever.

* * *

><p>He pushed Rinoa down as the room erupted around them, and threw his body over hers.<p>

He watched his father go down, and something inside of him tore, opening wide-mouth fissure that bled like the broken rag doll of his father, weeping gore across his motionless chest.

"Squall!" she breathed, seeing it all from underneath him, her body trembling, shaking, so hard that he got both arms around her, and pulled her up into them, using his body as the shield that separated her from the disorganized ocean wave of fleeing guests, letting them all batter up against him like rock-hung flotsam while she hovered, safe, in the circle of his embrace.

"Let me go! Squall, I can help him!"

Seifer pulled Hyperion back from the mangled wreck he had made of the shooter's head, and Squall shoved her face into his chest. She pushed at him with her hands, the tiny, ineffectual battering rams she made them into, pushing and pulling and screaming, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see another gun, another weapon snout, and this one was aimed at _her_, at the spinal curve of her exposed back.

He swung her around, toward the entrance, putting his back in the path of that fatal bullet now, and when it went off, it exploded like long ago fireworks, painting his night sky in blues and greens and the red that dripped from his father-

The shimmering force field of Protect flared out around them, in the glass dome of flickering lightning that deflected the bullet he had tried to take for her, and then it was gone, just like that, and so was she, slipping from his arms and sprinting through over-turned tables and abandoned purses, toward the huddled fan of his father's bodyguards.

"No! Rinoa, no!" he screamed.

There were too many of them-too many, popping up all around him, that one's hands full of knife blade, that one's glowing with the beginning heat shimmer blossom of Firaga, and he couldn't take them all, he couldn't _kill _them all-how had _so many _of them gotten past the Palace's careful friskings-

Squall kicked a table over into the path of the one with the knife, the one trailing Rinoa like her shadow, and when he drew Lionheart, when he chopped it down in one smooth executioner's blow through the man's neck, his mouth went thin with the grim satisfaction that chewed away his heart.

He was not really here anymore, whirling and slicing and dodging, spitting spleen and liver and lung sac-the rest of him had gone with her, was kneeling with her over his father's too-still figure, his father's _body_, because he was gone, Hyne _fuck _him he was gone, before Squall had ever really tried to know him.

He slipped in blood, and went to one knee as the world collapsed around him with a roar like a dragon's bellow, sheets of flame incinerating tables and chairs and the crumbling pieces of the chandelier that came crashing down, the gunshot pop of electrical short-out reverberating like his father's death in his ears.

* * *

><p>He unlaced the man's head with the precise, fatal twist of gleaming surgeon's scalpel he made of Hyperion, and kicked the falling body out of the way.<p>

Fuck it, Leonhart was down, buried somewhere in the glittering ruin of chandelier winking up at him like distant deep space, dead maybe in that jumbled wreck of broken glass and shattered wood.

He didn't let himself think about how he felt about that; there were still three more, and fuck him, he didn't know where Quistis was.

He staggered and almost went down as Thundaga pounded him in the chest with the full swing force of a hammer, and the fucker who'd thrown it at him turned pale, which meant that was probably the last of his spell stock.

Seifer peeled his lips back in a smile that was not nice at all.

He swung Hyperion like precisely-balanced baseball bat, following through with the strike like he was going all-out, aiming for that desperately-needed home run, and the man's head came loose with a wet tear like butcher-cleaved animal fat. Seifer watched it skip across the dusty floor, and then he was already turning, already looking, already seeing-

Zell, punching one of the remaining assailants in the jaw and then the throat, taking him down in a blur Seifer could barely follow, and Irvine, holding Blizzara like empty snow globe in his left hand.

Still no Quistis. Maybe she'd been caught in the crowd, in that tidal breaker of escaping mob, swept along on it, crushed underneath it-

Maybe he'd missed one, and she had paid for it, and _fuck him_, he had to find her right now-

A knife like a finger of ice_-this won't hurt long seifer good boy be a good boy mommy has to do this don't you understand-_slid into his back, and now he could see her, struggling through the debris of decimated interior and bled-out bodies; she had dust in her hair and down the front of that gown, that goddamned gown with the v neckline he'd tried not to stare at during the long car trip over-

The Palace flexed around him.

His legs were cloth, and fuck him stand up, fuck him _stand up_-

_-quisty I killed the dragon did you see me now you're safe-_

How was he supposed to protect her when he couldn't even motherfucking _stand_-

_-quisty stop I haven't killed the dragon yet you can't come down I said stop I'm gonna' protect you-_

Hyperion weighed a thousand pounds.

He let it drop, watched it fall like someone else's fingers had let it go, like someone else's nerveless hand had opened around it, because somewhere in the back of his mind, Seifer knew he was still standing there in his knight's armor of uncomfortable button-up, still wielding his sword, still slaying the dragon that was coming for her-it was coming _fuck him _and he was just _letting _it-

_-quisty wait _wait _you have to let me go first-_

His knees hit the floor with a bang like the gun that went off behind him, and he jerked, and this new pain, this new suffering burned him like Ultimecia's fingers, dragging rake marks of shivering red down his back.

He was staring at those same ribbons of scarlet now, those claw strokes of deep-scored gore. They were trickling away from him, radiating out in spokes of bloodshot color against the gray, gray floor.

_-_no _quisty you have to let me save you-_

_Fuck me fuck me fuck me-_

_-are you a boy or a man-_

_-I'm a fuckin' man-_

_-are you worthless are they better than you-_

_-_no _they're not I promise I promise please don't _leave _me-_

Her shoes stopped in front of him. He tried to look at them, tried to run his eyes farther up, up the soldier's muscles of her legs and over the hem of her dress, up to her blue, blue eyes that were the only spots of color in the world that was fading out around him, blurring into the gunmetal nothing haze of Time Compression-

But he couldn't. They just wouldn't. Fucking. _Move_, and he had to stare at her feet the way he'd studied Ultimecia's as she twitched his puppet's strings, and forced him to kneel like the good little marionette he was.

Seifer tasted blood. _Fuck him_, he was dying, and he didn't even know if she was safe, if it was all over-_are you a _man _or a boy are you useless my broken little knight_-

She touched him gently, and that silver fog rolled over him, swallowing everything.

* * *

><p>He was half-turned toward her when it skewered him from behind, and Quistis lurched an automatic step forward like she could help him, like she wasn't halfway across the room and <em>useless<em>-

Hyperion hit the floor with an echoing clang, and she watched blood run down the corner of his mouth, watched it make its way down his chin and into an artwork splatter at his feet, flaring out in the ragged spray of flicked paint droplet.

Zell took the man down with a neck break that made her wince, Irvine the shooter, but it was too late; he was unconscious by the time she reached him, limp deadweight under the hands she slid across his body, across his back-

The bullet was still in there.

She poured Curaga into him anyway, letting it fill her veins, letting it zip and crackle inside her like rumbling thunder storm, pulling everything she had up from the lockbox of mental container where she kept her magic, shoving and shoving and _shoving _until he glowed beneath her palms, until everything was on fire around her and she could barely see-

"Quisty, stop!" Zell yelled, getting a hand on her shoulder and yanking her back, breaking the conduit she'd formed between his body and her sweating fingertips.

Quistis came away panting, her arms and her hands seared with the smoldering memory of second degree burn. She'd sealed the knife slash and bullet hole that had felled him, but Curaga couldn't dissolve the fragment of metal still inside him, and it couldn't repair the internal damage he'd no doubt taken-he was still dying, still leaving her, and maybe she did care, just a little, because now, now-

Now all she could see was boy Seifer, kissing her skinned knee.

Boy Seifer, wiping tears from her face as the ocean ate her sandcastles again-boy Seifer offering to help her build more, even though he kicked them over more often than not.

Quistis let her gaze trail across rubble-strewn floor to Rinoa, working frantically over Laguna, and her eyes filled with tears.

She'd been in the _bathroom _when this all began, re-applying the lipstick she rarely wore, talking makeup tips with Selphie, because she'd thought surely, surely-

They were safe now; the evening had passed without incident, and they were supposed to be _safe, _because that was how she was supposed to keep them, secure in the perfect bubble of her exactly-ordered existence-

Irvine was digging Squall out of the wreckage, and she couldn't even tell if he was still alive.

Selphie, caught up in the same panicking crush of bodies Quistis had encountered when screams and gunshots first sent them tearing out of the women's restroom, appeared now, running toward Irvine's lanky form as he tunneled frantically, hefting fallen support beams and the snarled knot of table leg and top that Zell helped him move.

Squall's head broke the surface first, and she heard him exhale ragged cough that lurched the entire wreckage spread out around him, and suddenly, her heart unclenched and she could breathe again.

Irvine reached to help him out, but it was unnecessary, unwanted, because he was already standing, already pulling himself free, and then he was running toward Rinoa, sprinting toward his father, leaving Lionheart behind, forgotten.

Palace medics came tearing into the room, the bodyguard who'd fetched them hot on their heels, and Zell waved frantically to them as they spread out around Laguna, cupping both hands around his mouth. "Hey! We got a man down over here, too!"

Quistis slid Seifer's head into her lap.

Zell looked up at her from where he crouched, pale as the arc of Seifer's damp forehead, bleached bone against the pink slash mark of his scar. "You think he's gonna' make it?"

She shook her head numbly. "I don't know."

It felt odd, saying it aloud, because it forced her to acknowledge that she did not want him to die.

She'd had her whip around his neck when he was Ultimecia's puppet, and she had wanted him to die then.

But no; that wasn't quite true, was it? He was still her student, still Cadet Almasy, provoking Squall and fighting Zell and ignoring her lectures-_bandaging her elbow and the thin gash of red a tree branch had opened in her forehead_-and she hadn't really wanted to kill him, no matter how hard she tried to persuade herself that it was necessary.

She held him until they took him away.

* * *

><p>He was warm.<p>

Warm like he'd been on that beach, that beach with the seashells and smooth-worn pebbles and his mother's voice, calling him inside to dinner with his family.

He blinked and tried to sit up_-coming Matron-_and Hyne he _couldn't_, fuck him, he _couldn't_-

Something had chewed away his legs and his arms and his fucking _eyes_, because he couldn't move, he couldn't _see_-

Where had they gone-Quisty and Leonhart and that crybaby Zell, a blonde streak of tattletale down the beach hollering for Matron-why the fuck had they just _left him here_?

_"It's because they hate you." _his mother whispered with someone else's voice, and Seifer recoiled in horror.

They didn't hate him. He tormented and teased and bullied because they were his to do with as he wanted, because they were _his_-his family, his anchor line, and he didn't want them to see how scared he was.

_-they just put up with you because you were there boy they didn't really love you at all boy do you want them to win do you want them to win when they didn't love you when they _hated _you-_

_No. No no _no_._

Once, she had loved him. Just for a moment, on a dry-baked strip of sand, the devoured miscellany of her sandcastles broken and crumbling between them-he had seen it in her eyes then, when he stayed behind long after Matron called them to dinner, long after the sea drowned the sun and together they patted and molded and rebuilt.

She had. She _had_-fuck Ultimecia, fuck his mother-

She had not hated him forever.

Seifer's eyes twitched and jerked, and in one excruciating tear of gummed-shut lid, opened.

White ceiling tiles coalesced above his head, spot marked in the spreading brown of molding water stains, blurring in and out, up and down, elastic roof peak that he had to blink back into focus, once, twice, and then again.

"Oh, decided to join us again, did you?"

He tried to unglue his tongue from the roof of his mouth, but it wouldn't move, so he gave up and turned his head, one precious, agonizing inch at a time, until he could feel soft bed sheet under his cheek.

Dr. Kadowaki smiled at him, closing the book she held. "How do you feel, Seifer?"

"Unngh."

"Well, that's slightly more coherent than most of the noises you've been making." She heaved herself off the stool she'd been perched on, knees creaking. "I'm going to take some vitals real quick; hold still."

Hold still? The fuck else was he going to do-dance a waltz? Hyne, his goddamned head hurt.

He drifted into the obsidian smoke of semi-consciousness, free floating in almost-slumber like tepid bathwater, brief flashes of the real world flickering through in pyrotechnic bursts behind his eyelids.

_-pretty huh seifer hold my hand the sand's all wet and slippery-_

He shut his eyes, squeezed them tight, winched down like boy Seifer trying to make the monster go away-_but it wouldn't go away because the monster was inside of him, the monster _was _him_-and then opened them again.

Dr. Kadowaki unwrapped her blood pressure cuff from around his arm with the deafening scratch of parting Velcro, and hung it up next to the computer screen showing him the steady up and down spike of his heart beat.

"…re am I?" he slurred, blinking his eyes again, trying to get the film that kept lowering itself down over them to go away.

His throat tasted like open grave. He cleared it, and tried again. "…The hell am I doing here?"

Kadowaki raised an eyebrow. "Well, let's see, a week and a half ago you were in Esthar, getting a bullet dug out of your back and going in and out of consciousness-I hear that was pleasant; apparently all two of Esthar's only male nurses have black eyes after they tried to restrain you when you woke up confused-then about four days ago, the hospital administration decided you were stable enough for transport and they were sick of dealing with you anyway, and now here you are, back with lil' ol' me. I used to see a lot of you as a junior cadet, if you'll remember. At least Squall isn't in the next bed over this time."

He put a hand to his pounding head, and winced.

"Seifer, do you remember what happened?"

"…Kinda'." He remembered pain like her spells, ripping him apart along the seams, and Quistis, Quistis running toward him-_Quistis_-

"Quistis?" he asked woozily, blinking away that damn film again.

"What about her?"

"Is she-is she-" Fuck, he couldn't say it-he couldn't _ask _it, because he hadn't gotten them all, he hadn't protected her the way he should have, and when he went down with that fucker's knife through his back, all he could think was _please Hyne please please fucking _Hyne _not her too_-

He shoved the heel of his hand into his eyes.

"Are you wondering if she's ok?" Kadowaki asked.

He nodded without speaking, keeping that heel jammed into his eyes like it could hold everything together, like he wasn't dying all over again wondering if they'd killed her like his mother, the vacant marbles of her eyes staring up forever at him from beyond the ragged fringe of neck stub bleeding slow red across old-stained floorboards.

"Quistis is fine; you owe her a thank-you, actually-she's the one who saved your life."

"Quistis?"

"She administered Curaga when you first went down-kept you from bleeding out. If she hadn't done that, you'd have been dead before the medics even got to you. Almost blew her veins doing it, too. Zell brought her in a few days later with spell burns, though nothing too serious." He watched her settle back down on her stool, watched her fold her hands in her lap through the lash-veined slits of his eyes. "Seifer…are the nightmares still this bad all the time?" she asked quietly.

He rolled over onto his back, tensing his jaw. "Don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, don't you give me that, boy. I've read your whole file."

"Don't call me _boy_!" he snarled with the last of his energy, snapping his head around to pin her under his glare, pin her like he used to skewer bent-backed spine curve with his blade, with his murder weapon, and when she didn't waver, when she didn't even blink, he felt all the fight go out of him.

That heel was back in his eyes, pushing like he could shove them right the fuck back out through the sockets. "Yeah." Seifer mumbled. "Every night."

"Have you talked to anyone about this?"

"Who the hell would I talk to?" Did she honestly fucking think some sympathetic ear was sitting out there just waiting for him, waiting to listen and soothe and pacify-did she honestly, genuinely believe anyone gave a shit that he generally managed only three hours of uninterrupted slumber a night before his mother's fingers crept into his dreams, stroking and hitting and undoing his pants-

He had no one to tell.

_No one_.

He was a dare tossed back and forth between drunken female cadets on a slumber party bender.

He was a joke to Quistis and her fucking Liberi Fatali-he was just a _joke_, just an old washed-up punch line of a story that might have been amusing once, but was now just a little sad.

He stared at the ceiling.

"You might try acting like more of a human being once in a while, and less of a wild animal. People might be willing to listen, when they aren't so scared. Try it."

Seifer bared his teeth in what might have been an attempt at a smile. He'd rather spend a night naked in the Trabian wilderness then try to make the idiotic Leonhart-worship of Garden's general population understand him.

"In the meantime, until you learn to play nice with the other kids, you can always come talk to me."

"No."

"Don't you take that tone with me-when you were just a shit of a little boy, I used to paddle your ass when you talked back to me, and I'll do it again in a heartbeat. Hyne, you had a mouth on you, even at that age!"

That made him smile, just a little. She would probably do it, too.

She leaned back on her stool, crossing her legs and re-settling her hands across them. "Why did you ask about Quistis?"

He tried out a shrug; it pulled the bandage he could see swathed tightly around his bare torso, winding all the way down to the top of the hospital scrub pants that were his only attire now, and a sharp spear of agony stabbed him between the shoulder blades.

"Very interesting that she was the first thing you asked about, you know. You were asking for her, a few times-do you remember that?"

Fuck him.

The physician's face creased in a smile that was almost impish. "Your secret's safe with me."

"_What _secret?" he snapped, wishing for just a moment that he had Hyperion in his hand again-just one brief stroke was all it would take to cut off his own head, and end forever the beginning of a conversation he knew he really wasn't going to like.

"You had a bit of a crush on her when you first got here, too, you know. You were so mad she'd forgotten you; I always suspected that was why you never junctioned-you wanted to hold onto that grudge of yours, and keep punishing her for it. I remember you used to tease her mercilessly-pulling her hair, hiding her pencils, re-arranging her homework-"

"She had one of those folders with the color-coded sections-she color-coordinated her _homework_, for fuck's sake."

"You watch your mouth, young man." Kadowaki crossed her arms and stared down her nose at him. "Quistis appreciates a gentleman-maybe if you put a filter on that foul mouth of yours, she'd look your way instead of Squall's for once."

Seifer winced. That was a low swing. Fucking bitch.

"You think Leonhart's a _gentleman_?" He lifted both of his eyebrows. "He used to communicate in fucki-in grunts. He never looked at Quistis once when he was her student-you're telling me _that's _what she wants? Some emotionless robot of a queer-" He cut himself off again as she frowned at him.

"Well, she doesn't want someone who makes himself so unpleasant no one would dare get close enough to find out that underneath all the bluster is a halfway decent young man, either. I know what you went through during the war-you were the victim, not the villain, Seifer, and I know you don't want me to talk about this, but it's about time someone told you that."

His throat tightened, closing itself off in one burning pinhole of the dam that broke the surging tide of his sudden grief.

She didn't _know_. The surface dynamics of the relationship between him and Ultimecia/Edea had gone into those reports, but the undercurrents, the looks he groveled for, the hands he'd fucking _begged _for-the twisted and the macabre and all the shit that kept him awake at night, because he didn't want to see anymore-

She couldn't possibly know that.

What could those reports possibly say, anyway? Seifer Almasy's mother fucked him. Seifer Almasy's mother fucked him, and even as a part of him curled into the fetal-huddled victim she left behind on his rumpled bed, the other half of him liked it.

She couldn't possibly know that, because he'd never had the balls to tell anyone.

He repulsed the world enough as it was.

"Zell dropped by here a couple of times with Quistis, you know." she said, obviously deciding it was time to change the subject. "There's a nice boy-you could learn a thing or two from him."

"_Chicken Wuss_?" he blurted. "Wuss came _here_, to see me?"

"Just because they don't like you, doesn't mean they want you to die, Seifer."

"He probably just came by to make sure I was dead." he sneered.

"He brought hot dogs, actually-seems to think they're some kind of cure-all."

"Maybe if you're treating an overdose and you're out of charcoal."

Kadowaki grinned again, and the webs of smile line that branched out from the corners of her eyes reminded him of Matron's, painted in sunshadow black.

"I can't argue with you about that." She slapped her hands down on both knees. "Now; you feel up to eating anything that isn't part of an I.V. approved diet?" She flicked a bag hanging down near the monitor charting his heart rate, the liquid inside jumping spastically.

"Yeah." Seifer replied, surprised to find that he did. "Just not one of those fucking hot dogs."

Kadowaki smacked him lightly with the clipboard she picked up from the bedside table.

* * *

><p>"You know, it's funny." Zell slurred around a mouthful of the pizza sitting between them, strings of cheese dangling limply from the corner of his mouth and pasting themselves across his chin.<p>

Quistis winced.

"I mean, I hate Almasy and all, right? Guy's a prick. But I'm glad he didn't die, ya' know? Don't know why. I guess I was thinking about the way he used to be when we were kids, or somethin'."

"He was a jerk then, too." Quistis pointed out.

"Yeah, I know." He reclaimed the threads of questionable-looking dairy product with a loud slurp, and reached for another piece. The pie they had bought to share was more than three quarters finished already, and she had barely even picked at it. The man was like a garbage disposal. "But he was nice sometimes, remember? He used to put sand down my pants and steal my cookies, and this one time, I think he took a shit in my bed-"

Quistis rubbed her eyes. "That was you, Zell, remember." House breaking Zell had been a little like trying to train a pleasant but mentally-slow puppy, and anything that happened to frighten him had resulted in accidents that took Matron an entire day of stain-scrubbing and room-airing to completely eradicate the evidence of his…problem. Coincidentally enough, many of those incidences took place whenever Seifer was around.

He was five before he'd stopped waking Quistis up with smells that hit her like a freight train.

"Oh right," he said, shoveling more pizza into his mouth. "Well, anyway, he did all that stuff, but 'member when he helped you build all those sandcastles again, because the tide came in and wrecked 'em? He used to kick 'em over all the time, but when he saw you down there crying on the beach, he skipped dinner to make a bunch more."

She remembered; she was surprised Zell did.

"He used to do stuff like that sometimes." He scratched the back of his neck with a hand coated in pizza sauce, smearing bright orange across the tuft of hair there.

She cupped her chin in one hand. "He was basically a big brother to you, growing up-it's hard to just let go of that, no matter how cruel he was sometimes. Besides, the bullying and teasing was a pretty normal older sibling tactic, from what I've observed. I don't think he did it because he hated you."

"Really?"

Quistis flicked a strand of hair from her eyes. "If Seifer had hated you, he never would have bothered with you-there were a few students in class that he absolutely loathed, and he did everything he could to make sure they stayed as far away from him as possible. He may have picked on you a lot, but he kept coming back, kept provoking you-I think he would have just tried to permanently scare you off if he disliked you as much as he likes to pretend he does."

Zell set down his eighth slice of pizza, looking thoughtful. "You're probably right, Quisty. You know he saved me, when T. Garden attacked us a few weeks ago? I'm in the middle of beatin' the shit out of these guys, right? And all of a sudden Rinoa starts throwing magic around, and everyone goes nuts and starts running, and I'm gettin' knocked around, thinking I'm about to get trampled, and suddenly somebody's got me by the collar, and I look up and it's Seifer, pulling me back toward Garden."

"Whatcha' guys talkin' about?" The perky voice that broke into their conversation brought Quistis' head up and around, skidding her gaze around to Selphie, standing to the left of their table smiling at her with the artificial cherry dye of the lipstick ring the popsicle she was eating had scrawled around her mouth.

"Seifer." Zell told her, folding his next piece in half and cramming the whole thing inside at once.

"Oh goody!" she squealed, jamming herself in next to Quistis on the narrow seat. "I was thinking', Quisty, Seifer cleaned up really nicely, huh?"

Zell pushed himself back from the table, groaning. "Man, I'm stuffed; Quisty, why didn't you eat more? I almost finished the whole thing by myself. I think I'm gonna' puke."

"No one said you had to eat the whole thing just because I wasn't very hungry."

"Quisty!" Selphie intervened again, giving Quistis a smack on the top of the head with her popsicle. Part of it snapped off and landed in her hair, and she fished it out with a sigh. She wasn't sure she had the energy for Selphie right now-she'd spent several hours last night surfing local news channels trying to suss out the political climate in Esthar after the disastrous ball nearly two weeks ago now and looking for updates on President Loire's condition.

Still critical.

"I'm listening, Selphie." she said, far more patiently than her friend deserved.

"So, I was thinking Seifer looked really cute dressed up, right?"

"I suppose." Except for the fact that his formal attire had not been able to cover up the sulky glower on his face, ruining any chance of Seifer appearing half-way respectable.

"Well, maybe you could hook up with him."

"Eww!" Zell hissed, holding his stomach. "That's nasty, Selph. Quisty's got better taste than that."

"Why would you even suggest that?"

"Not _dating_-just a night, or something."

Quistis blinked. "You want me to have a one night stand with Seifer Almasy?"

Selphie shrugged, swinging both feet as she ate her dessert. "You just need _someone_, Quisty. You're alone all the time and stuff. And Rinoa said he's really good at stuff."

Oh, Hyne. This wasn't anything new-Selphie was always attempting to attach her to anything remotely attractive and single, but she'd never thought she'd be undergoing this particular discussion in regards to Seifer. She didn't really want to think about what kind of 'stuff' he may have participated in with her friend.

"I'm not sleeping with Seifer, or anyone else for that matter."

"I _know_-that's the problem."

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "It isn't a problem. I'm perfectly happy being single right now. I don't have time for a relationship."

"You _never _have time for anything that isn't work." Selphie accused, glaring threateningly. "You hafta' have something else goin' on in your life, Quisty. Irvy and I are worried about you." She aimed her popsicle like a sword, splattering red droplets all over Zell's arm as she did so.

"Hey!" He jerked it back.

"Irvine is worried about me as well, or you're putting words in his mouth because he doesn't want anything to do with trying to hook me up with someone he knows I wouldn't consider in a million years?"

"He said he's worried, right, Zelly?"

"Nah, I don't think so-ow! Don't kick me!"

"He's worried." Selphie insisted, narrowing her eyes menacingly at Zell. "He says you need to loosen up more."

"'Loosen up' does not equate to mindless sex with strangers, and anyway, that sounds like something you would say, not Irvine."

"Seifer's not a stranger." Selphie pointed out, leaving a streak of popsicle like blood across her thigh as she waved it emphatically.

"How's Squall's dad doing?" Zell asked, clearly as thoroughly disturbed by the direction of the conversation as she, and Quistis turned gratefully to address him.

"The same, from the sounds of it. Vice President Daar has officially taken over for now." Rinoa's early intervention had saved Esthar's president, but surgical complications-continuous bleeding and several infections-kept him unstable and hospitalized, and the world that went on without him held its collective breath, waiting with the predator patience of a wolf watching its gut-savaged prey wheeze out the final moments of its life. It was an eerie eye of the storm sort of calm, and Quistis knew it would not last; Estharian officials were currently in the process of investigating the source behind the attempted assassination, and the most popular rumor in circulation was that the hit had been taken out on President Lagoire due to his support of B. Garden and the sorceress Rinoa. Quistis did not generally put much stock in street gossip, but she tended to agree with it this time, particularly considering the fact that one of the would-be assassins had tried to take out Rinoa as well.

"We're not talking about anything sad right now." Selphie scolded. "We're here to get Quisty laid."

"We are _not_." Quistis said firmly. "Seifer is not even remotely my type, and if I were in the market for a boyfriend, which I am not, he would be the last man on earth I'd consider."

Garden's overhead P.A. system came on with the familiar nails-on-chalkboard screech that prompted a few hands up over sensitive ears, and Quistis wondered if Squall was about to make another of his excruciating speeches. Seifer had always accused her of being boring-he'd always wanted action and not the droning soapbox of classroom lectures, likely another reason he had never passed his SeeD exam-but Squall's attempts at public communication were downright painful.

It was Dr. Kadowaki's voice and not Squall's, and Quistis perked up as she heard it. "Quistis Trepe, please report to the infirmary."

"Think it's about Almasy?" Zell asked, reaching for another slice of pizza. Selphie snatched it away before it reached his mouth and promptly ate it herself, and Zell frowned down at his empty hand.

"Probably. He must be awake, finally-he's still my student, so I'm technically responsible for him."

"Bye!" Selphie chirped. "And remember-scuffing the muff is the best way to get over an ouchie!"

_Oh dear Hyne. _They had not originated from even remotely the same planet, let alone the same orphanage. Quistis shook her head and walked away.

* * *

><p>Training Center<p>

Balamb Garden

6 Years Ago

The new boy was older, taller, thick across the shoulders like he spent most of his afternoons in Garden's weight room, and glaring prodigiously at Squall from beneath the arc of overlong blonde that bisected one very green eye.

Squall met his gaze blandly for a moment, and then turned away. Instructor Lendor had introduced him briefly as Seifer Almasy, a transfer from Weapons 103-and, as rumor would have it, apparently some kind of prodigy with the gun blade Squall had started training on-and he'd listened just briefly before tuning it all out. He looked exactly like just one more of the lumbering breed of preening jock that already surrounded him, making him about as interesting as one of the Grats that winged past into the verdant tangle of distant Training Center paths.

Instructor Lendor separated them into sparring pairs, and the new boy made a beeline for Squall; the smile he flashed as he edged into Squall's escape route was not pleasant at all, and the fresh-forged glint of his blade flashed like burning meteor hitting volatile atmosphere and breaking apart. He held it casually in a gloved hand, still smiling, his lips peeled back around teeth that gleamed like his sword.

Something inside Squall recognized that smile, and he went cold all over.

"Nice to meet you, Leonhart." Seifer Almasy said in a voice that conveyed the exact opposite.

Squall drew his gun blade and settled into a wary two-handed en guarde, waiting for Instructor Lendor's signal-but Almasy was already stepping, already swinging, and he had to bring his weapon up in a frantic up slash of defense that threw sparks.

What was this asshole's problem?

Seifer grabbed the wrist that twisted in the aerial figure eight of a tentative disarm maneuver, and bent it back like it was nothing, just limp rag doll arm joint, and Squall staggered away, crying out.

The flash of the temper that rarely trickled through the armor of his indifference burned his timidity down to ash, and he lunged.

Seifer blocked him one-handed. He whirled, sliced neatly, and opened a ribbon of superficial red along Squall's right forearm.

They came together in a storm of flying blades and tempers then, Squall's rage feeding the nuclear kiln his rage made of his heart, kicking when he couldn't get his blade into an opening, punching when Seifer seized his weapon blade-first in a hand like a steel clamp and all he had left, all he could still use was the fist-molded lump of his palm, the battering ram he swung for Seifer's temple like he was trying to kill him.

Seifer let go and elbowed him, his glove dripping the miniature tributaries of blood dribbling from the skin flaps of his cut-up hand, and Squall's world spun like the ground, a carousel twist of blurred dirt and grass that hit him hard enough to plunge everything into lightless chaos for a moment.

Then Seifer was sitting on him, pinning his legs and his arms and his face, smashing it down into training center sod that clogged his nose and his eyes and his mouth, and he couldn't breathe, Hyne he _couldn't breathe_-this crazy jerk was killing him-

And then the weight let go in an arc of violent pendulum swing that hurled Seifer into artificial palm trunk hard enough to crack it, and suddenly Instructor Lendor was standing between them, looking pissed enough to kill.

Squall wiped his bleeding lip, spitting grass.

Seifer got to his feet cussing, and charged him again.

"_Almasy_!" Lendor hollered, and dropped him with a clothesline that flipped Seifer over onto his back hard enough to leave him there for good, stunned and wheezing. "What the _hell _was that, you two?"

Squall clenched his fists, breathing hard, the saline conflagration of sweat running down his forehead and into one eye partially blinding him. How the _hell _was he supposed to know what was wrong with this dangerous psycho?

Lendor swapped his glare back and forth between the two of them, picking Seifer up by the back of his jacket with one hand and setting him back on his feet. He kept himself between them in a solid obstacle of disgruntled ex-SeeD, wider than the both of them combined-and still Seifer looked like he was seriously contemplating rushing Squall again.

Squall sucked calming breaths that gradually smothered the bonfire blaze of his rage, letting his fingers peel themselves apart until his hands hung loose again, dangling open and harmless along his sides.

Whatever. Freak.

* * *

><p>Balamb Garden<p>

Present Day

Vacant doll's glass of blue iris that used to be his father's eyes-

Chewed-open chest cavity, wide as his fist and weeping crimson like Rinoa sobbed grief-

Wine-dark carpet under his knees, deep-pile and opulent and drenched in his father's gore, soaked in his life like the hands Squall pulled away shaking, because he wasn't going to make it, he couldn't make it-no one could _survive _torn apart like that, and Rinoa was going to fail, was going to lose blank-staring patient gaze, and Squall, Squall-

Squall shut his eyes.

He felt her hand touch him tentatively in the unlit gloom of his private quarters. "Squall?"

He held as still as he could, regulating his breathing, but she knew anyway, and her arm came around him in the half-embrace that was all she could manage while he was curled on his side with his back to her.

She let him lay there for a while, pretending to sleep, and then she asked him the question he knew she'd been wanting to pose for a while, the one he didn't want to answer.

"Are you gonna' go see your dad?"

He wanted to shrug off her touch, because he didn't deserve it-his father had landed there in his crumpled marionette pile because of him, after all-but he didn't, he couldn't, so instead he just lay there, concentrating on each scrape of in breath and feather brush of exhale.

"You should go see him. I went yesterday-he wants to see you, Squall. He's not doing very well."

Laguna wanted the son who'd saved the world, the cinema hero who'd gotten the girl, not the selfish aberration of the man behind the protagonist's mask.

He rolled himself into the covers like they could hide him from the hand that gently stroked the hair at the nape of his neck, keeping his eyes closed, keeping them squeezed like he used to when he was just a child, carrying out a rare participation in the game of hide and seek organized by the other children.

"Squall, you can talk to me. Please." she said softly, burrowing up against his cold back.

He said nothing.

"Fine. You can spend your whole life not knowing him, but it's not going to make you feel any better. He loves you, Squall. He wants to know his son."

He wanted to know Squall Leonhart, Liberi Fatali, savior, semi-celebrity, and not the quiet man who cared about the woman lying next to him and his friends and not much else.

He didn't want to know the man who had guessed, on some level, that something like this might happen-the man who had suspected, assumed-and decided he didn't care enough to not go through with it if it meant keeping her safe. He'd used Laguna for his political clout because it was the only way he could think of to save Rinoa and Garden and his miniscule circle of friends, and he had not let himself linger over the potential consequences for his father.

He had not let himself give a crap, because there were a million things more important than Laguna Loire.

That was not the man his father wanted to meet, to know-that was not the man he'd created with the wife he still clung to years after her death, and it was not the kind of son he could be proud of when he shed the reptile layers of bland civility Squall wrapped himself in and found out what was really underneath.

Rinoa rested her small little chin on his shoulder. She kissed the long curve of white neck that was all she could see of him. "It wasn't your fault, Squall."

She said that because she needed to believe it.

He sighed. She wasn't going to let him pretend anymore.

He rolled over into her arms, pressing his too-warm cheek to the hollow of her collarbone, breathing the smell of the coconut shampoo she used, the scent she wore because she knew it was his favorite.

Rinoa smiled down at him, moving strands of hair out of his eyes.

His heart twitched like gut-shot hunter prey, and died for a moment.

Everything about her was beautiful. How _couldn't _he not sacrifice anything that was necessary for her? Garden, his career, his friends-he'd burn them all for her, if it would forever preserve the tender smile that curved down at him through folds of dark.

It scared him that she had such a hold on him, such a vise grip on the very foundation of everything that was Squall Leonhart.

Sometimes, he wondered if Seifer had felt the same way, kneeling in front of their mother like a beaten dog.

He kissed her, putting all the emotion he had never been very good at expressing out loud into it, rolling over so he was on top of her now, sliding one hand up over her cheek and into the hair she'd taken down from the twist of French braid Selphie had plaited it into earlier that morning.

She looped her slender arms around his neck.

And for a while, for a chain of moments that strung themselves into what he wanted to make into an eternity, Squall made himself forget.


	7. Chapter 5

**A/N: Huge thanks to those of you who have reviewed already; I really appreciate it. Dee, your review totally made my day when I read it. If you guys don't really have anything to specific to comment on, a 'hey, I'm reading this and I really like it' is perfectly fine. The longer reviews that highlight exactly what the reader liked are nice of course (especially if they're full of fawning praise, meh heh,) but even just a quick reminder that you're out there and reading is highly appreciated. The number of hits this story gets doesn't tell me whether people are actually reading and enjoying it, or whether most of you just clicked back out and prayed to the writing gods that I never post again.**

**Chapter Five**

Deling City

2 Years Ago

Their blades know one another, and when Squall lunges, Seifer parries, because they have done this before, they have _been here _before, staring down across this gladiator's arena of coiling dust and flying blood. They have traced each step and turned each fighter's rotation of skillful deflection, and they have met like this before, in this apocalyptic weapons crash that echoes on forever.

His heart leaks cold venom.

He does not want to kill this man crouching in front of him, this almost brother with his identical scar and the twin broadsword curve of gun blade terminating a half foot from Seifer's chin. He does not want to murder this man who might once, in another life, have been his friend-

But he does-he does because his mother wishes it, and because part of him-

Part of him wants them all to pay. For hating him-for _leaving _him and, worse, for forgetting him.

He tries to, anyway, with a leap that brings Hyperion ringing down against Lionheart, straining three inches above the cold steel of Leonhart's eyes in a locked-tight impasse that shoots fire through Seifer's fingers and his arms, exploding like a supernova inside his chest. He can feel her eyes rake claws of fire down his back.

He cannot fail her. Because if he does-if he does-

She'll pick his weakness like a scar, and he is not sure he can survive anymore of that.

He lets go, lets up, and rolls under Leonhart's desperate slash like he is dodging wooden-pegged training dummy.

He comes to his feet with a thrust that will impale Leonhart's spine and his heart, angled up through the wide-mouth bass flap of his dying lips-

And he is suddenly not there anymore, and Seifer's right arm explodes in a line of flame, and he stares down in dumbfounded astonishment at the flaps of his arm peeled back in the bloody smile of this new wound beneath the fluttering slice in his coat sleeve.

Leonhart is there again, right in front of him, with a thrust of blade pommel that takes him in the mouth, hard enough to snap his head back. He watches the seeds of his broken-off teeth fly through the air, and he puts his arm up to stop the next blow, the killing stroke that will slide through forearm bone like it is half-melted butter-

But there is nothing, not even the flat whistle of a near miss, and he realizes Leonhart is running past him now, heading for her-

No no no no no no no-

She is standing, and she is horrible.

The elaborate crest of her headdress chimes like far-away bells.

Her hands bleed ice.

Out of the corner of his eye, Seifer can see the girl in blue, running like she can change something, sprinting like she is the streak of providence that will alter everything-

And then the javelin of her spell slides through jacket zipper and subcutaneous muscle layer, and Lionheart pinwheels, and when it hits, when it clangs, he keeps hearing it, forever.

And his almost-brother, his may-have-been friend buckles, and bleeds, and stumbles over the side of ornate parade float in the eternal free fall Seifer's heart goes into.

* * *

><p>Balamb<p>

Present Day

Balamb was quiet this time of the morning, the sun just beginning its first hesitant ascent into a sky still stained in the bruise of nighttime.

Irvine pulled fresh air into his lungs with a smile, savoring clean oxygen like a fine wine. Being shut up in a space that was not nearly as large as you'd originally perceived it to be-being stuck anywhere had the tendency to make everything shrink, real quick-with a predominantly male population tended to take a toll on the olfactory senses after a while. Particularly when you shared a dorm room with a guy who loved hot dogs, but whose digestive tract did not particularly get along with them.

Said guy trailed behind him, yawning hugely.

"Hurry up, Dincht."

"What the hell are we even doing out here this early?" Zell bitched, rubbing his eyes and breaking into a trot to keep up with his long-legged friend, his hair glinting in the rising sun.

"I _told _ya'-I'm gettin' some flowers for Selphie."

"Did ya' screw up again, or somethin'? An' why did _I _have to get up at the ass crack of dawn to help you get laid?" he mumbled, wiping a hand across his eyes again.

"It's a romantic gesture, dumbass-it's not about tryin' to get in her pants. But, I mean, if she's feelin' frisky or something after I give them to her…"

"Least I can pick up Quisty's, I guess."

"You still doin' that?"

"Yeah; she likes 'em, so I figure why not? It's nice for her to get flowers, you know? I mean, she gets those bouquets from the Trepies sometimes, but I think those just irritate her. She doesn't like bein' worshipped."

Irvine pulled his hat down to combat the sudden flare of cresting sunshine that struck his eyes in a blinding diamond scatter of daybreak. "Hey, Dincht, you got a thing for her or somethin'?"

"Who, Quisty?"

"No-that purty young lady over there." He pointed at an old woman hobbling across the street a few feet in front of them, bent-backed over her cane and glaring at everything through the slits of eyes almost completely obscured by folds of sagging skin.

"Nah; Quisty an' I are just friends. Thought about it for a while, but I realized she was more of a sister to me than anything-plus, I always wonder if she ever got completely over Squall, you know? I mean, sometimes I think she did, 'cause he's got Rinoa and all now so it's not like there's any point for anyone else to even think about it, but she never seems like she's ever interested in anyone else. So I dunno." He scratched his head.

Irvine shrugged. "Most of the guys at Garden aren't good enough for her. Quisty's better off bein' single than hooking up with one of those losers, if you ask me."

"So who do you think _is _good enough for her?"

"Not you, that's for Hyne damn sure."

Zell kicked gravel at him, toeing it up with the edge of his sneaker and flinging it at his friend's back. Irvine laughed and pulled ahead, re-adjusting his hat and keeping an eye on the vendors beginning to set up along both sides of the street, scanning their wares for the bright splash of white-fringed yellow that would alert him to the presence of Selphie's favorite flower. There was something so innocent and cheery about daisies, according to his girlfriend, and she collected anything related to them with the sort of over-the-top enthusiasm she generally reserved for trains-a dozen pillows sewed in the delicate scallop edge of flower pattern, shower curtains, pens, a stuffed Chocobo with the things liberally scattered throughout its downy feathers…He never would have guessed half the stuff even existed, but she somehow managed to ferret it all out with the kind of tenacity Irvine usually only observed in the tunnel focus of Zell's hot dog fixation, which reminded him-

Ah, shit. The subconscious under layer of his mind had alerted him to the disappearance of his friend a couple of minutes ago, but he'd chosen to ignore it, and now he realized he was all alone in the middle of Balamb's still-lethargic street market. Zell probably wasn't far-there were several peddlers hawking food items along the street, everything from deep-fried pockets of cinnamon and cream filled dough to the gold-battered sticks of hot dog his friend had probably already sampled a dozen of. He was probably sprinting ahead of him right now spending gil like it was going out of style, gorging himself on as many treats as he could inhale before his money ran out. Irvine had seen this particular run-and-gun gorilla tactic of gluttony before, and it wasn't pretty. The last time he'd come with Zell to Balamb's street market, a horrified Quistis had needed to help drag him away by the ankles from a table of samples set out by a vendor who no doubt had gone out of business the same day. She later confessed to him that the sight of Zell shoveling fresh-baked pretzels and bite-sized pizzas like he hadn't seen food in a month haunted her dreams for a long, long time.

He believed it; Quisty was far from squeamish, but the carnage that had ensued on top of that innocent table adorned in its sweet little gingham tablecloth was worse than most of the battles Irvine had lived through.

Irvine signed a couple of autographs for some giggling teenage girls who bashfully approached him, then sent them on their way with a tip of his hat and a smile. Two years after they'd stopped Ultimecia from destroying the world as they knew it, the Liberi Fatali were still famous, and it wasn't unusual for any of them-particularly Irvine and his impeccable charm-to be stopped occasionally by fawning fans. He noticed, now, however, that while many people were staring at him, not many approached-in fact they seemed to be hurrying off in new directions, tossing just a couple of quick glances over their shoulders at him.

Inside his chest, his heart gave a sick lurch. The nosedive of public opinion in regards to B. Garden did not bode well; Quistis had quietly informed him last night that she'd noticed a substantial drop in mission requests while helping Squall organize some papers the day before, and the memory of that weary, pretty little face was enough to frighten him.

Pale lines of stitched-together brow and the crease mark that would become a permanent disfigurement of premature age in a few years-that was all his friend, his bright, intelligent friend with the soft smile had been last night. Stress had reduced Quistis to just the upside down arches of her dark circles, and the eternal lip pinch of the frown she wore constantly now.

Maybe Zell had the right idea; she needed something to take her mind of work and the unyielding pressure of political storm front she held up with just her slender, insignificant shoulders.

He looked for something she might like as he walked, hooking his thumbs in the belt loops of his pants-civilian issue because it was his day off, but still not too casual. He had a reputation to uphold; slouching around in the ketchup-stained jeans Zell had stumbled his way into that morning did not suit Irvine Kinneas, connoisseur of fine wines and the even finer women he'd collected, pre-Selphie, the way Rinoa accumulated slogan-stamped pens, most of which ended up in the holder on Squall's desk. So far, Irvine had spotted 'Don't Worry Timber Wolves You'll Get 'Em Next Year!'-a simple 'go Timber Wolves' apparently being too unrealistically hopeful at this point-'Jimmy's Best Grat Stew In The City' and his personal favorite 'Mallon's You Got The Money We Got Your Honey.' He'd always wondered where Rinoa had gotten that one-Mallon's was a seedy strip club that operated as a bad front for the blatant prostitution that went on inside; he and Zell had found that out the hard way when they tried to hire a stripper as a joke for Squall, and what came to Garden was a woman who (he hoped) had seen far better days twenty years ago, loudly demanding which 'miserable sack of shit loser was getting her crabs tonight.' They were rewarded with three hellish weeks of kitchen duty from Squall, who had not found it nearly as amusing as they had.

When Zell offered Quistis a few gil to give Squall a lap dance to make up for the whole experience, those three weeks of perdition turned into another week of scrubbing Quistis' toilet while enduring several blistering lectures that still rang in his ears sometimes. The stripper had, somehow, ended up drunk in her bed, and she'd had to carefully disinfect everything that might have been touched on top of burning her sheets, so he figured they'd probably kind of deserved it.

Ahead of him, Irvine spotted a flash of brown disappearing around a corner, buzzed back from a profile that looked vaguely familiar to him.

He followed it, slinking around the corner like a ghost.

Some instinct made him pull down his hat and slouch as he rounded the curve of sun-bleached brick that spilled him into a small, almost empty square of carefully-tended grass and bubbling fountain-not very inconspicuous, considering there weren't too many six-foot sharpshooters wandering around in a hat and the characteristic ponytail he wore down the back of his duster, but it was better than nothing. He made sure no one had seen him before carefully crossing the square to the door that half-recognized sliver of profile disappeared through, and then he carefully pushed it open, slipping inside.

He was in a bar; the scent of spirits hit him like a blow to the face as he crept inside-it did not smell like a particularly ritzy bar-and ducked down behind the counter, sweeping his coat in around his ankles in a tight arc so it didn't brush anything that might give him away.

"…You kidding me? We can't do that. He'd be on us before we could even get a shot off."

Irvine peeked cautiously over the swirled wood grain of stained bar top; the man he'd followed was partially facing him-he was a B. Garden cadet, Irvine realized now, barely recognizable in civilian clothing. The rest of the small group gathered in a diminutive curve of solemn semi-circle around him had their backs to Irvine, and he couldn't identify any of them.

He slid back down into his hiding place.

"Well, how plausible do you think this whole thing really is?" another voice asked. "Come on-you really think we can get a chance at her?"

Well, this had all the makings of something ominous. He felt a stab of forbidding skewer his heart, and hunched down lower into the coat he arranged around him in folds of lovingly worn material that couldn't quite warm the chill of unease beginning to spread through his limbs.

"I'm still not sure about this."

"Then leave."

"You'd really just let me walk out of here right now? Yeah right; I know too much now. You're telling me you'd trust me not to go to someone in charge with all this?"

"Well, we don't need you pussing out at the last minute, either."

"I just think we really, really need to think about this. If we go through with it, we're traitors, you know. Garden's a military institute-the military has a tendency to execute traitors."

"Seifer Almasy seemed to survive being one ok." The voice dropped low with the weight of its sudden bitterness, and Irvine shifted off the dead asleep numbness of his left ass cheek, trying not to make any noise.

"You really think we should just kill her, just like that?"

"She's dragging the rest of us down. We're trained to _fight _sorceresses, you know? Doesn't make any sense. Anyway, be back here tonight, twenty thirty; we got some new members who are supposed to be showing up."

Irvine waited until they all shuffled out through the back door before he stood up, his heart thundering, putting the roar of incoming surf into his ears; he scrambled for the door and hit it at a dead run, stumbling a little as he burst through, almost knocking over a small child cutting through the alley behind the bar.

Shit shit shit shit _shit_.

"Dincht!" Irvine hollered as he reached the intersection of street and manicured lawn front that made up the patch of sunlit boulevard he slid to a stop in; he could see Zell's shining head now, bent over a row of creatively arranged shell necklaces and nodding at something the hopeful-looking vendor was saying to him.

He had one looped speculatively over his thumb and pinky finger when Irvine grabbed him around the elbow, and he gave a startled yelp as the sharpshooter dug his hand in hard, and yanked.

"Hey, wait!" the vendor screamed behind them, jumping up from behind his wares table to give chase.

Zell got one hand in his pocket as he lurched awkwardly along behind his friend, scattering gil behind him in a rainfall of coins that appeased the merchant enough to let them go. "Dude, you almost just made me steal that!"

"We gotta' haul ass, man." Irvine called back over his shoulder, glancing behind him long enough to see Zell get a face full of whipping ponytail.

"The hell's goin' on?"

"Jest move it, Dincht! Keep up or I'm gonna' give you to that little old lady with all the cats who owns that salon Selphie and Rinoa are always gettin' their nails done at."

That was motivation enough for Zell to put on a burst of speed that almost overtook Irvine, who dropped his arm and lifted his free hand to the hat trying to peel loose of his head and fly free on a spiral of wind that gusted hard enough to almost rip it out of his fingers.

* * *

><p>She stared vacantly out the window with her computer on and blinking insistently in front of her, a ceaseless Morse Code flash that kept trying to pull her back to the work she had been trying, and failing, to concentrate on for the past hour.<p>

_"I'm very worried about him, Quistis. I don't think you realize how much the war hurt him."_

_"Seifer's fine, I'm sure." _

_"He isn't. Two years later, he's still having flashbacks so violent he wakes up screaming most nights. He had them every night he was here in the infirmary. Sooner or later, that boy's going to snap." _

_"I don't understand what you think I can do about it." _

_"Just talk to him; see if he'll confide in you."_

_"Seifer doesn't confide in anyone." _

_"Just try, Quistis. Maybe he'll come around eventually, and he needs someone there to help him when he does." _

_"He won't. He'd rather just push everyone away." _

Her conversation with Dr. Kadowaki kept running through her head, kept pulsing to the time of the caffeine that shivered in tremors of fabricated adrenaline through her.

She kept coming back to the image of Seifer, bolt upright in his bed, cords of sweat-soaked sheet like twining reptile wrapped around him, shivering and defeated and weak, all the things he had never been.

Arrogant, oppressive, powerful…these were the adjectives she associated with Seifer Almasy, the descriptions that fit into the neat little box of the impression she had formed of him a long time ago, the one she had never been quite able to let go of.

Seifer Almasy did not dream and hurt and regret, and he did not need anyone's help, least of all hers.

If she couldn't make herself believe that anymore, then nothing in the world made sense any longer. If Seifer Almasy could not vanquish his own demons, if he could not grind them down to the meaningless ash flakes of already-forgotten nightmares-what hope did the rest of them have?

What hope did _she _have?

Did it mean, as Quistis had often feared, that she would go on forever seeing her students, her brave, beautiful, dying students, coughing blood-flecked entrail clot-wheezing the ribbons of oxygen that were all that would fit through slashed-up throat pieces-dragging useless spinal cord like a tail, missing body parts from the waist down-

She shut her eyes.

It always took them too long to die. The clean cut of a heart shot, the down stroke of a beheading the victim never even sees coming-these were the mercy kills she wanted for them, if they could not live. These were the warrior's deaths she prayed for, the soldier's finale she would rather see.

Instead, they stared up at her through the shredded meat of what used to be a human body, still breathing, still conscious, still _living_-living and living and living, until she had to put them out of their misery herself.

Save the Queen, tight-wrapped around shrapnel-chewed throat column.

Save the Queen, masticating whimpering vocal box.

Save the Queen, dangling limp from her nerveless, shaking hand.

Quistis forced her hand to move, made it grab the curve of winking computer mouse, beaming its laser-bright red at her like a malevolent glare.

No time for the nightmares that kept her awake at night and leaked into the perfectly-structured organization of her daylight. She had the missing training center weapons to keep her occupied, and Squall, shuffling through the motions of his life like a zombie, not so horribly different from his usual emotionless approach to his day, but somehow more…disturbing. More heart-breaking, because all the feelings he did not allow to surface on his face surged and roiled and leapt just behind his chest, and she knew him well enough now to sense their faint echoes.

She did not have time to play therapist to Seifer Almasy, not when it wouldn't even make any sort of impact on him.

Quistis pushed her glasses back up her nose with a sigh. These were her back-up pair, the replacements that had been necessary to retrieve from the drawer in her nightstand where she kept them after she shattered her original set.

She did not like them.

A half-moon of duct tape bound them together at the juncture of stem and eyepiece where they'd had to be repaired after Zell obliviously sat on them, and now they didn't quite fit right, slanting a little crookedly across the bridge of her nose. She had to keep shifting them as she typed, an interruption in the seamless relationship between thought and hand that she detested to no end.

She tapped them again, and sat back, the mouse darting almost unconsciously, toggling between screens to bring up the newest development in her own personal mystery.

_To: Quistis_Trepe_14 (quistis_trepe_)_

_From: 3877SA ()_

_Subject: (No subject)_

_Give me the sunlight and the sea_

_And who shall take my heaven from me?_

_Light of the Sun, Life of the Sun,  
>O happy, bold companion,<br>Whose golden laughters round me run,  
>Making wine of the blue air<br>With wild-rose kisses everywhere,  
>Browning the limb, flushing the cheek,<br>Apple-fragrant, leopard-sleek,  
>Dancing from thy red-curtained East<em>

_Like a Nautch-girl to my feast,  
>Proud because her lord, the Spring,<br>Praised the way those anklets ring;  
>Or wandering like a white Greek maid<br>Leaf-dappled through the dancing shade,  
>Where many a green-veined leaf imprints<br>Breast and limb with emerald tints,  
>That softly net her silken shape<br>But let the splendour still escape,  
>While rosy ghosts of roses flow<br>Over the supple rose and snow._

_But sweetest, fairest is thy face,_  
><em>When we meet, when we embrace,<em>  
><em>Where the white sand sleeps at noon<em>  
><em>Round that lonely blue lagoon,<em>  
><em>Fringed with one white reef of coral<em>  
><em>Where the sea-birds faintly quarrel<em>  
><em>And the breakers on the reef<em>  
><em>Fade into a dream of grief,<em>  
><em>And the palm-trees overhead<em>  
><em>Whisper that all grief is dead.<em>

_Sister Sunlight, lead me then_  
><em>Into thy healing seas again...<em>  
><em>For when we swim out, side by side,<em>  
><em>Like a lover with his bride,<em>  
><em>When thy lips are salt with brine,<em>  
><em>And thy wild eyes flash in mine,<em>  
><em>The music of a mightier sea<em>  
><em>Beats with my blood in harmony.<em>  
><em>I breast the primal flood of being,<em>  
><em>Too clear for speech, too near for seeing;<em>  
><em>And to his heart, new reconciled,<em>  
><em>The Eternal takes his earth-bound child.<em>

_Who the essential secret spells_  
><em>In those gigantic syllables,-<em>  
><em>Flowing, ebbing, ebbing, flowing,-<em>  
><em>Gathers wisdom past all knowing.<em>  
><em>Song of the Sea, I hear, I hear,<em>  
><em>That deeper music of the sphere,<em>  
><em>Catch the rhythm of sun and star,<em>  
><em>And know what light and darkness are;<em>  
><em>Ay, faint beginnings of a rhyme<em>  
><em>That swells beyond the tides of time;<em>  
><em>Beat with thy rhythm in blood and breath,<em>  
><em>And make one song of life and death.<em>  
><em>I hear, I hear, and rest content,<em>  
><em>Merged in the primal element,<em>  
><em>The old element whence life arose,<em>  
><em>The fount of youth, to which it goes.<em>

_Give me the sunlight and the sea_  
><em>And who shall take my heaven from me?<em>

She didn't quite know what to make of this enigmatic correspondent; Quistis hadn't heard from them in the couple of weeks since she'd received the first poem, but today when she'd briefly opened her e-mail to check any recent messages, there was a new one from this '3877SA.' Another sea-themed verse, too-she was trying to decide if that was merely coincidence or a clue to their identity and thus far had not arrived at any intelligent conclusions, which was rather a letdown considering she had enough coffee zinging through her system to power a nuclear reactor.

Someone smashed the door to her classroom open, and she looked up to see a familiar gray-draped figure step inside like he owned the place, wearing the kind of smile that had always gotten her back up; when he looked pleased with himself it generally did not herald anything pleasant, and Quistis braced herself.

Seifer slammed something down on her desk.

Quistis glanced down at it, folding her hands together in a knot like the one that twisted inside her stomach. "What's this?"

He smiled more broadly, his lips peeling back off his teeth. "My preliminary SeeD exam, Instructor. You'll notice I passed."

Quistis blinked, very slowly. "The preliminary SeeD exam is traditionally led by the testing cadet's main instructor. And it's Sunday, Seifer. Technically, no one is even working today."

"I used my powers of persuasion."

Meaning he had scared the living crap out of some poor recent addition to Garden's small community of teachers, easily intimidated by someone with Seifer's reputation and snarling wrath.

Quistis frowned down at the piece of paper he had presented her with. "Seifer, you can't take the field exam."

He leaned both his hands on the desk, and she noticed how scarred they were-they had not been that marked, that disfigured when he ruled Garden's halls with his posse at his back, half the student body at his feet the way he'd tried to make the world yield-

"There's only one a year, Instructor. I can't skip it."

"It's only been a week since you've been out of the infirmary. You're not physically prepared for the exam." Probably not mentally, either, but she didn't mention that to him.

"I _passed _the goddamned test!"

"I'm aware of that. But the field exam isn't practice, as you know-there is a real danger of getting hurt, possibly killed, and we can't put a cadet who was recently seriously injured out there."

His face visibly darkened. "Afraid you're going to miss me when I pass and your favorite student is gone?"

She wasn't horribly concerned about that possibility, but she didn't point that out to him, either. She needed to tread very carefully here, judging by the spring-coiled tension in his shoulders and the knots of angry fist he curved his palms into. Navigating a conversation with a furious Seifer Almasy was a little like trying to corner a wild animal.

"Seifer." Quistis said his name calmly, trying to make her voice into something soothing, something that would leech the flush of color out of his cheeks and back down into his white, pinched lips. "You can re-test at the next field exam-"

"In a _year_!" he snapped, glowering down at her from his significant height advantage.

"What's the hurry? It isn't like you haven't been here before." she replied tightly, narrowing her eyes. This was not exactly conducive to the civilized, pleasant conversation she had hoped to have, but she did not have time for one of his temper tantrums.

And besides. He'd messed up one of the tidily clipped-together stacks of waiting assignments she had carefully arranged perpendicular to the corner of her desk.

"Nice, Trepe!" he snarled.

"Seifer." she sighed. "I'm your instructor-that means I am at least partially responsible for your safety, and I can't let a student who almost died a few weeks ago participate in the field exam."

"_You _don't get the final say. I can go over your head and get approved."

"You think _Squall _is going to take your side?"

"Why not give Pubes a call and ask him? I'm sure he'll see the great potential for getting rid of me." Seifer snatched Quistis' phone from her desk before she could stop him, flipping the base around toward him so he could reach its buttons.

Oh for-

"Seifer, Squall has much more important things to worry about than-Seifer, put it down-_give _it to me-"

Commanding him to do something was just as difficult as Quistis remembered, and she flashed all the way back to tide-eaten beach, and the streak of blonde that cut a gleeful swathe of destruction through the turret towers of her carefully-assembled castles. She had always needed to resort to physical intervention with him-it was seemingly the only thing he understood-which back then had usually equated to a sharp shin kick that turned into the wrestling match Zell inexplicably usually ended up in the middle of, either because he was trying to protect her or because he had accidentally wandered into the center of it; she was never sure which.

She lunged across the desk at him, grabbing for the phone, and he pulled it out of her reach, using all eight inches he had on her to his full advantage. "Yes, hello? Pubes? What can you do for me? Well, it's interesting that you ask-I was thinking you could go fuck yourself with Lionheart and maybe do something about that emo twat you consider a personality."

"_Seifer_!" Quistis hissed, getting a hand around the collar of his jacket and yanking hard. He stumbled forward against her desk, dropping the phone with a riotous clatter, the muscular upper half of him meeting her halfway and throwing Quistis backward; his arm came up automatically to steady her, and suddenly she was pressed up against him in something like an embrace, his chest very warm through the worn fabric of his trench coat.

She could feel the hard ridge of his abdominal muscles through the thin material of his shirt, and for a moment her brain froze like her mouth, stopped on the half a protest she had not had time to complete.

Maybe Selphie was right-it had been far too long between interactions with the opposite sex that had nothing to do with front line strategizing or homework assistance.

She wasn't _actually _attempting to picture what Seifer's body looked like under that bulky trench coat, was she?

Her phone beeped at her from where it now sat in a jumble of tangled cord and cracked receiver, and she realized they must have hit one of the extension buttons during their struggle.

"Uh…Quistis? Are you there?"

"Hey, Pubes, just the-"

"Yes, Squall-sorry." Quistis cut him off, hurriedly backing away and scurrying around the corner of her desk to bend over the pieces of chipped-off plastic littering her floor in specks of shining obsidian. Seifer squatted across from her, letting his hands dangle loosely over his thighs and into the v of open space between his knees.

"Uh…you called me?"

"You're a fascinating conversationalist, Pubes; I'm curious-does Rinoa sometimes wish she could grow a dick just so she can stick it in your mouth and shut you the fuck up?"

Quistis made frantic shooing motions with her hands.

He just smiled.

Squall's voice went tight. "What's _he _doing there?"

"Seifer just had a few questions on an assignment." _That _was plausible-Seifer had never worried about an assignment in his life, or really even completed one, for that matter. "I apologize for bothering you; I hit the button accidentally."

"Actually, Pubes," Seifer said in a voice that was so casually conversational Quistis had to suppress a groan, "Trepe here was just wishing me good luck on the SeeD exam tomorrow. She thinks I'm gonna' look really hot in my new uniform."

"Quistis is letting you take the SeeD exam?"

"No-Seifer is just trying to bully his way into getting what he wants, as usual. Obviously he is not physically fit to take the field exam right now."

There was a long silence on Squall's end of the line. "Quistis…we need all the new SeeDs we can get."

Seifer let his smile splay out into a wide-lipped grin.

"Squall, you're not seriously telling me he should be cleared for participation tomorrow?"

"We can't afford to turn anyone down right now. Besides…" he trailed off, and she silently finished the thought for him. _Besides, maybe someone will fry his ass with a couple of Fira and take care of the problem for me. _It wouldn't be the first time he had said something along those lines, usually mumbled into the curve of his palm when he thought she wasn't paying attention.

"Quistis? You still there?"

She turned her eyes away from Seifer's radiant face. "Yes."

"I need to see you in my office. Now."

She didn't bother to wait for the please that wouldn't come. "All right. I'll be there in just a moment."

He hung up without saying anything further.

"What a rude asshole." Seifer said cheerfully, smiling at her again.

Quistis just looked at him.

"See you in the field tomorrow, Instructor. I'll be the one making everyone else look like a useless fuck-up."

* * *

><p>Presidential Palace<p>

Esthar

Laguna counted another ceiling tile. Sitting next to him at his bedside, Ellone lowered the novel she'd been reading to him, book marking it with her finger.

"Uncle Laguna, are you even listening anymore?"

He smiled weakly over at her. "Sorry. Keep going."

"You're thinking about Squall again." She could always tell; the crinkles of his age lines went even deeper, etching both eye corners in spider web creases that made him look old, for perhaps the first time in his life.

She could never quite accept that he was now forty-six years old. Laguna Loire, President Loire, bore his streaks of old man silver like a twenty-year-old prematurely graying, straight-backed and broad-shouldered and eternally jovial, piggy-backing her through the vast echoic halls of the Presidential Palace when there were no lingering aids to frantically advise the president how 'undignified' it all was. She was twenty-five now, and he carried her like she was still a pig-tailed girl, still his giggling little niece with the whittled riding crop of the tree branch she carried to encourage her 'pony' when his endurance began to flag, still the smiling little child trying to subtly fan the flames of slow-smoldering love between her adoptive mother and the handsome young soldier who kept lingering long after she'd nursed him back to health.

Ellone watched him touch his wedding band, watched him spin it in a slow twirl of gold-smoked mirror surface that threw the light of his bedside lamp into her eyes.

Sometimes, she caught him talking to Raine. Just when he thought no one was listening, sitting alone in his office with forgotten reams of administrative paperwork strewn out in front of him, his lips murmuring her name like a prayer. He told her about Ellone, about Squall, the children she had never gotten to watch grow up, save the world, fall in love-

It opened a hole in her chest like the one she could see in his eyes, serrated-edged wound that leeched her happiness like it stole his youth.

There would never be anyone else for him. Raine's death had left a lesion like amputated limb, ghost pain that could never quite be sated, and sometimes, sometimes-

She wondered if she'd done the right thing, nudging them toward one another.

She slipped her finger from the book, pasting a bright smile on her face. "That's ok. You look tired, anyway. We'll pick this up later, ok?" She set it carefully down on his nightstand, next to the silver-framed photo of Raine, smiling and shyly extending her hand toward the camera, her wedding ring catching sunshine like arcing meteor spray.

"Do you think Squall will come today?"

Ellone brushed her hand over the top of his head. She told the same lie everyday, and now it slipped out easily, seamlessly, and she felt a pang like a gut kick. They did not lie to one another, and her complicity squeezed her heart like a fist, even if he neeed to hear it. "Maybe."

She tip-toed quietly to the door. "Good night, Uncle Laguna."

He didn't say anything, and after a moment, Ellone shut the door softly behind her.

The walk from his personal quarters to the office he had once presided over was a short one, and she slipped inside without even knocking, closing the door soundlessly behind her.

Derran Daar slept like the dead, his face buried in the mountainous stack of paperwork it had slumped forward into, the fringe of wavy brunette at his neck sticking out in clumps of spiked curls. The smile that pulled her lips lasted briefly, and then she crossed her arms and adopted a stern look.

"Ahem."

He sat up with a jerk, smearing drool across his chin with one hand. "Huh? …the hell-"

His eyes found her across the room and he straightened up, military rigid, snapping the pen he'd gone to sleep holding. He looked down at it with a frown, and she saw from the corner of wastebasket she could just barely glimpse from the side of his desk that it was not the first to suffer such a fate.

"Ellone, hey. How's President Loire doing?"

"Better, I think." Physically, at least. "Where did Kiros and Ward go?" They'd been hanging around the last several days, helping 'the kid' as Kiros referred to Laguna's unconventionally young predecessor, though Ellone suspected what they were really doing was keeping an eye on their friend, whose broken body was slowly recovering but whose fragile spirit was not.

"Uh…coffee break. I guess." He glanced at the clock on the wall, a ridiculous wooden monstrosity carved to resemble a dancing Chocobo, the show girl kick of its leg signaling each hour with a click that sounded like a bomb going off. She thought it had been a gift from Zell Dincht, the cheerful little blonde who was not much changed from the boy she remembered from that seaside orphanage, the one who apparently had a direct line to a local supplier who delighted in creating junk most sane people just re-gifted, because she had seen similar items displayed (unwillingly, Ellone was sure,) on Squall's desk during her brief visits to Garden. Predictably, Laguna had loved the tacky thing, and delighted in showing it to visting delegates who had to pretend they liked it.

"They've been gone for a long time." Derran commented. "They probably got tired of sitting here watching me sign stuff."

They were still soldiers, still men of action, and Ellone knew the daily machinations of government drove them a little crazy. They were probably sequestered somewhere private, playing Triple Triad and drinking too much.

She watched Derran out of the corner of her eye as he bent back over his work, the furrow mark of concentration that was beginning to take up permanent residence between his brows back, deeper this time, reminding her of Laguna and his new indents of advancing years.

He was only thirty.

Ellone flashed back to her foster brother, even younger, even grimmer, wearing the faint crease of permanent frown through his forehead scar like premature age line.

During the course of Laguna's recovery, all five of Squall's closest friends had been to visit him, first Zell and Quistis, the former bearing dirty magazines the latter had not known and was not pleased about, then Irvine and Selphie, and finally Rinoa, Rinoa with the smile that lit up his world the way Raine's had, because she was his last tenuous connection to the detached son that hovered outside his doorway, present only because he would not leave Rinoa alone out in a world that had begun to turn on her.

He never entered his father's hushed sickroom, and it burned Laguna alive.

She let her eyes wander back to Derran's bent head. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah; that'd be nice. Thanks. I could use something to keep me awake."

Ellone smiled at him. "I figured."

The hallway she took to the junction between the corridor holding his office and the recently-refurbished guest quarters Laguna had insisted on re-doing rang with the hollow click of her shoes. The sound reverberated back to her in shockwaves of eerie cavern sound, a single intrustion into an otherwise noiseless void.

The vending machine Laguna had paid for out of his own pocket ate her change, and whirred mechanically. Hypothetically, it was for his hard-working employees in case they needed a mid-afternoon refreshment, although really what it was used most often for was the goal marker in some silly game Laguna and Kiros had invented that involved bouncing wads of paper off Ward's head and a ridiculously complicated scoring system she had never quite understood.

She wanted that Laguna back, not the broken-down almost corpse that stared at her from the mounds of his meticulously-fluffed pillows like he didn't even see her.

Ellone punched a glowing button at knee-height, and her purchase hit the tray with a clunk that almost startled her in the crypt silence of the hall.

Through the arc of window to her left, something caught her eye.

From it, she could see out over Esthar's mirror-polished technology, gleaming ribbon lines of highway that were not motionless even at this time of night. Hung with lights like distant galaxy stars, the city kept moving, kept building, kept _advancing_, in an expansion of human ingenuity that had at first utterly boggled the mind of a naieve young girl fresh from Winhill's diminutive country charm.

Now, Ellone didn't even notice it as she stared.

She was seeing a spray-painted semicircle of red like fresh blood, a focal point of streaked crimson and navy that wrapped around the curve of building to her left.

_Fuck You, President Loire. Balamb Knew What They Were Doing. Kill The Sorceress Whore._

* * *

><p>Zell had taken point with her on this mission on the off chance someone had spotted Irvine slinking around earlier, and he preceded her now into the sweat-scented haze of packed barroom.<p>

This made sense to Quistis; after listening to Irvine's report on what he'd overheard that morning and coming away from it understandably concerned, Squall-currently in the process of nursing an ill Rinoa back to health while frantically trying to process preliminary SeeD exams-had sent two of his most-talented SeeDs to check into the situation while he was otherwise occupied. Completely standard procedure.

What she did not, however, understand was what Seifer Almasy was doing here.

He was seated at the bar when they walked in, ostensibly nursing one final drink to soothe the pre-exam nerves that brought out a variety of interesting reactions in most cadets-from pre-test vomiting to odd superstitions to the current trend of streaking completely naked through Garden's teeming halls, courtesy of Zell, who had done just that for some reason the night before his test, and then passed with flying colors the next day. (Quistis had always wondered about that. Zell claimed it was on a dare, Irvine theorized it was solely because their friend was batshit. She tended to lean toward his explanation.)

The open space of burn-scarred wood in front of Seifer was conspicuously vacant of any sort of beverage however, and he had his stool twisted around to face the crowd, his eyes tight beneath the spray of gold half-concealing his scar.

He was staring at her. And smiling.

When he hopped down off his stool and began to make his way toward them, his trench coat rippling out around him, Quistis suppressed a groan.

"Fancy seeing you here, Instructor. Wuss."

"I'm sure it's a great surprise to you, considering you probably followed us."

He lifted an eyebrow in a show of startled innocence that was not at all convincing. "Why would I do that?"

To gloat, most likely, although she wasn't going to admit in front of Zell that she'd had to concede their latest battle of wills to the pompous jerk. She was still not entirely sure she'd forgiven Squall for undermining her like that.

"We've got an important job, Almasy. So, ya' know." Zell flicked a hand at him in a gesture of dismissal that bared Seifer's teeth in something she was not altogether convinced was supposed to be a smile.

"I doubt it's all that important if Quistis let you tag along." he said conversationally, giving Zell a smile like a wolf's open-mouthed predator grin.

Wonderful. Seifer was going to start a mine's-bigger pissing match with the easily-provoked martial artist, right here when they had just-Quistis checked her watch-twenty minutes to go until showtime.

She eased herself subtly in between the two of them, putting a hand lightly on Seifer's chest like the splay of her fingers could somehow stop him if they suddenly charged one another like fighting dogs. It would take nothing less than Save the Queen to separate them if it came down to it, but she was hoping she would not be forced to resort to that in this crowded room where drawing attention was the last thing she wanted.

Zell stepped up next to her, his fists clenched.

"What'd you say, Almasy?"

"I said I'm surprised you took enough time away from sucking the cowboy's dick to even make it here." Seifer replied pleasantly. He had not bothered to remove Quistis' hand from his chest, and she could feel his heart thundering like the swell of music that buried them in an ocean surge of discordant notes, all played at a volume only slightly below that of Zell's angry response.

"WHAT'D YOU FUCKIN' SAY?"

"Zell." Quistis said quietly. "We're here on an assignment; just ignore him." She touched him lightly on one shoulder. "Take a seat and keep an eye out for the cadets Irvine described. They should be showing up soon. We need to watch where they go."

Shaking like an over-tightened cable, Zell stayed where he was, in his fighter's stance and clearly torn between which of his two options was most imperative-doing as Quistis said, quietly going about the mission Squall had entrusted them with, and beating Seifer's face into a pulp of disintegrated bone and torn flesh.

Quistis had the sneaking suspicion he was leaning toward the latter.

Hyne.

"Seifer, please. Shouldn't you be getting ready for tomorrow? Resting?" She despised the note of pleading that entered her voice, the thread of weakness she left open and hanging for him to pick at, to unravel, and for just a moment, Quistis thought she saw him hesitate.

His eyes shifted away from Zell and over to her, and for just an eye blink half second of time, she saw his face soften into something that reminded her of sleeping Seifer, child innocuous and beautiful as the prince in the fairytales Matron used to read to them.

For just a moment, he was the Seifer that had sometimes been her friend, the Seifer who had beaten up another child who'd very briefly stayed with them at the orphanage just because he'd hurt Quistis' feelings-

The Seifer who had not crouched at their mother's side like a chained dog, and tried to kill her.

And then he blinked, and Quistis realized she had been mistaken-it was just the new Seifer Almasy after all, bully Seifer with the chip on his shoulder and the hate in his heart, physical manifestation of all the worst parts that had comprised boy Seifer.

She turned away from him, tugging at Zell's arm in an attempt to force him to do the same. After a tense moment during which she thought he might lunge for Seifer's throat anyway-he was probably mentally rescinding the conversation they'd had in the cafeteria several days ago regarding Garden's infamous traitor-Zell finally relented, allowing Quistis to lead him away to an open section down the bar where they could sit and watch the entire room with relative impunity.

Seifer, predictably, followed them.

She ignored him and placed an order for two sparkling waters, a choice he disdained by loudly snorting. "Really, Trepe? You have to put up with Wuss here for several hours, and you're not even going to go for one of those watered-down bitch drinks?"

"I'm working." she said coldly.

He took a seat next to her, sweeping his trench coat out and around him so that it hung down the back of his stool in a banner sweep of shabby gray, fluttering like the torn shreds of a war-eaten flag.

She could see old blood on it, faded like the line of damaged tissue Lionheart had left behind, and a part of her wanted to know how many deaths those patchmark imperfections of pale crimson represented.

Seifer's arm brushed hers where she laid it along the bartop; he'd rolled up his sleeves in the body-packed heat of the tavern, the twists of washed-out silver he'd molded them into showing Quistis his bare forearms, corded with muscle like steel cable.

Years ago, those arms had been only slightly thicker than the branch he had declared to be his knight's sword and carried everywhere with him; now, she reflected, they could snap a man's neck with just a slight flex of that carefully-cultivated physique.

She wondered what boy Seifer would think of the man he had grown into. He had realized his childhood knight's dream and then in the end utterly failed at it, the beautiful princess instead going to Squall, apathetic little Squall who had never been much impressed by Seifer's fantasies of slain wizards and rescued maidens.

Squall, the hero of the story Seifer had always wanted to star in.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye. She could see him as she daintily sipped her beverage, staring at her the way he sometimes had when they were just carefree children on Matron's beach, splashing in shallow tide pools with the screams of joy she had not uttered for a very, very long time. It was a slightly quizzical look, an I'm-not-quite-sure-what-to-make-of-you look, the same one he'd always shot at her when she meticulously color-coordinated the outfits of the doll Cid had bought for her in a Galbadian toy store, assigning each a day of the week that was to be strictly adhered to. When the doll's Monday outfit was ruined by Zell and a wayward popsicle, she'd frantically rushed it to the sink and shredded it to pieces under the hysterical ministrations of the sponge she'd watched Matron use in the same way on one of her own shirts. Seifer found her in a huddle on the kitchen floor with the destroyed scraps of it pressed to her cheek, bawling.

He'd attempted to alleviate the problem by dismembering Quistis' doll, piece by piece.

In Seifer's world, you fixed things by breaking them. She knew he probably still would not understand why she'd been so angry with him; no more doll, no more crisis about what it would possibly wear on Mondays now.

She supposed he had genuinely considered himself to be helping.

"What are you smiling at?" he demanded.

"Nothing." She propped her elbow on a knee and set her chin in her hand. "Do you remember when we were kids and-"

"Hey." The man that stumbled up to her reeked of alcohol, and spent the next several seconds indiscreetly undressing her with his eyes. To either side of her, Zell and Seifer both went spring-loaded, winched tight with the stiffness she could feel in the arm Seifer still had pressed along the length of hers, and the protective hand Zell set down on her shoulder.

"The fuck are you staring at?" Seifer snapped.

The drunk ignored him. "Hey, baby; nice shoes. Wanna' fuck?" He grinned like this was the most brilliant thing he'd ever uttered.

Maybe it was.

Seifer beat Zell to his feet by a half second, surging forward in a long step that put him right in the man's face, his hand coming up in a lightning grab that wrapped it in folds of collar he yanked up toward him, so the man could take in every inch of his scarred face.

Either he didn't recognize Seifer, or he was just that inebriated; he swatted at the white-knuckled fist close enough to crush the vulnerable arch of throat column that peeked out of his shirt, and then made a feeble effort to push Seifer away when that didn't work.

"Piss off." the drunk slurred. "Wasn't talkin' to you."

"Seifer, let him go. He's just drunk."

The man's knees went slack and he pitched forward; Seifer stumbled a little with the sudden change in direction, trying to manhandle the idiot away from Quistis.

He didn't quite manage it in time. Her new admirer caught himself on her breasts, giggling.

Seifer hit the man across the jaw, and as he fell, Zell helped him the rest of the way down with an ankle hook that sent him sprawling.

"_Fight_!" someone screamed, and then the bar erupted around them in a hurricane tempest of flying fists and feet and chairs, and Quistis buried her face in the palms of her hands.

* * *

><p>Oh shit-<p>

He ducked the bar stool that came winging toward him in a whistling corkscrew of drink and blood splashed wood, and came up with a right cross that cold-cocked the man who'd thrown it.

Almasy had an arm like a sledgehammer; the prick who'd molested Quisty breathed out in thin whistles of almost sob through the shattered lower half of his face, facedown in the puddle of red his broken jaw leaked like the streamers of terrified piss that ran down his leg and out the frayed cuff of glass-sprinkled jean.

Asshole.

Someone swung a pool cue for Almasy's head; Zell snapped a front kick into the man's stomach that folded him over his foot hard enough to spew drunken vomit, and then something smashed into him from behind, and Zell felt beer-sticky fingers tangle in his hair.

He whipped a backfist over one shoulder and hopefully into his assailant's face, but when he struck he found only air, and suddenly someone else was on him now, riding Zell's back like he was some kind of damn Chocobo, and he went to his knees with that shit's hand still knotted in his hair-

And then Almasy was there, pulling his attacker off with a snarl like marauding animal, and the guy skidded across the bar and crashed down heavily on the other side, taking half-finished drinks and the sun flashes of scattered tips with him.

"Your left!" Zell screamed, dodging a graceless punch and knocking the guy out with a left hook that spun him one-hundred-and-eighty degrees before sitting him down hard in the pandemonium surging around and around them in a dizzy carnival flash of soaring kicks and high-arching streams of hurled drinks, catching the light in a rainbow flicker that momentarily blinded him.

Almasy's coat flapped open around him, showing Zell the protruding handle of Hyperion.

Shit. If Almasy started in with that, they were all going to jail.

Well, they were probably going to end up there anyway.

They ducked simultaneously, and came up together, taking another two attackers down in a linebacker rush that jammed Zell's right shoulder. He fell back slightly, rotating the muscle spasm out of it as Seifer stepped out in front of him, one of the pool cues in his hand. He cracked it like a whip, smashing a drunk who'd fumbled a knife out of his pocket across the temple, then catching another who tried to pummel Zell with the mug of almost-empty beer in his hand with the backswing of it.

Their shoulders grazed as they fell back into the same defensive arrangement they'd formed during T. Garden's last attack, and suddenly, Zell realized Almasy was smiling at him.

Not mockingly, not cruelly, just the stained grin of one comrade to another, his upper lip split down the middle with a streak of red that was already beginning to swell.

Something opened inside his chest, something like a chasm that let in new feelings that weren't spite or malice or lingering old ghosts, and then he could feel that smile on his face as well. He turned in a blur of down swinging elbow that brought him cleanly around into another one that broke the nose of some idiot charging Almasy like he thought he could even touch them.

Fuck yeah.

* * *

><p>Balamb County Prison<p>

Balamb

The walls of his prison cell telescoped around him.

They flexed, and flexed again, condensing everything-Dincht's ankle-crossed feet and bar-propped back, and the gems of starlight that were the only spots of illumination in this dark fucking world he'd never planned on coming back to.

He dropped his head and took deep breaths, long pulls of air that could sate his lungs but not his thundering, panicking heart, and he was hyperventilating, he was fucking _hyperventilating_ because outside the window he could hear their voices again, their shrill, bee hum voices, screaming for his blood, for his terrified traitor's heart-they wanted it on a fucking _spoon_-

"Hey, Almasy, you ok?"

Yeah-he was just peachy fuckin' _keen_-

He could hear Dincht's shoes scrape dirty prison cell floor, and he watched them shuffle out a tentative approach that put his pulsing, trembling heart in his throat.

His voice had probably been one of them-fuck, he'd probably _led _the goddamned protest along that stretch of stamped-flat sand outside the solitary confinement cell they'd thrown him into, the one that didn't even leak as much light as this one did, the one with the flat black canvas of eternal night that chewed into him like her eyes did-

Seifer put his head between his knees, wheezing air.

Fuck him fuck him fuck him he couldn't let Dincht see him like this-he couldn't let _any _of them see him like this because when they realized that underneath all the arrogance and bluster and sneering taunts there was just shivering little boy Seifer, trying not to cry, they'd rip him to pieces.

Zell's hand touched his shoulder carefully, and Seifer's world shrank to the pinpoint of corrugated prison ceiling that was all he could see.

* * *

><p>D-District Prison<p>

Galbadia

The bars of his prison leak strands of spectral outside light, just enough that he can sort of see his hands in front of him, cross-stitched in the shiny pink of the scars that are the only emblems he will receive for his service.

They are certainly not keeping him here to award him a medal.

He is hoping they kill him, and praying they won't.

He wonders what they have done with his mother. Is she rotting away in prison the way he is, living out each day a pace at a time, a breath at a time, whiling away hours and seconds and minutes until they all blur together, until they are no longer separate measurements of time but hoursecondsminutesdays? Is she-

Is she thinking about him? Is she worried about him, or does she-

Does she want his blood, his traitor's execution the way the rest of them do? The way the rest of them are screaming for it, begging for it, so loudly he can hear them, so stridently he can't sleep at night, because all he can hear are their cries for his head, chasing him through his dreams like her (_smiling-kissing-mother's-rapist's_) lips.

He looks back down at his hands, because these are the only things he can see without screaming.

Outside, he can hear the echoic footfalls of the psychiatrist that is supposed to evaluate him, the mousy little head shrink whose nose he has already broken once; he is marching up and down, up and down, until his steps are a familiar cadence that join the monotony of chanting voices and in and out breath and popping finger joints that already form his world.

He will not enter, because he is afraid. Because the scarred, flawed, failed human being that used to be her knight has been made into something he is not, something horrifying and monstrous and all-powerful, and he wants to laugh-

Except that he cannot, because when his throat hiccups around the first giggle of hysterical laughter that he might not be able to stop, he realizes he might begin sobbing instead, and closes his mouth.

They do not know. They do not know that inside there is only shriveled-up ambition, and withered fairytales.

They do not know that inside, there is just a little boy who wants to go home.

He's fucking sorry, all right? He's sorry and he misses his mother and he _just wants to go home. _

He wants to go home to people who hate him, because it is not this horrible, echoing place with shadows that crawl off the walls to eat him whole.

His hands are shaking.

They have not stopped shaking since he got here.

He tries to piece together another picture in front of his eyes, letting his brain pull up memories by the roots and collage them across bare prison walls, and he realizes he is looking at a beach.

It is his mother's beach before she broke him, and it holds them in a tableau of childhood that almost brings tears to his eyes, because they do not like him-they are looking away from him, toward one another, and he has to stand alone at the edge of the shoreline because he does not know how to be their friend-

But they are not trying to kill him.

They do not have their hands and spells and the loops of whip she cracks with the expert wrist flick of her next attack around his neck, and that is enough.

Outside, they picket with their signs and their banners and all the hate that has ever existed in their hearts, all the loathing they have ever experienced, all saved up for him, and he hears the footsteps beyond his cell go away.

He is alone again, and he tries to decide whether he should cry.

But he doesn't; he just goes on looking blankly at his hands, because someone might hear, and because there is no shoulder heave of tearing grief that can heal the abyss that goes on forever inside him where his heart is supposed to be.

So he stares at his hands. He stares at his hands until the webs of lifeline branching his disfigured palms turn back into his mother's beach, until he can see a boy that used to look just like him playing alone in the ocean.

He watches his hands until a miniature head of blonde joins him, not because she wants to, but because he is there and so is the sea and sun and sand, and then he shuts his eyes.

* * *

><p>Balamb County Prison<p>

Balamb

"_Don't fucking touch me_!"

Zell backed away with his hands out, moving like he thought Seifer might rip his throat out if he didn't make his slow shuffling retreat into something unhurried and unthreatening.

Maybe he would. Maybe he fucking _would_-they'd peel him off Wuss with his teeth still in the little bastard's throat and then they'd understand, they would finally fucking _get _that the monster inside his chest, the one she had nurtured but not planted-

It was still there, still eroding him like cancer, and it was squatting where his soul should be.

"Hey, man, calm down."

That voice brought him back, snapped him out, and his world helixed back into coherent order around him, and suddenly everything made sense to him again.

He was in Balamb's general lock-up, with Zell Dincht of all people, and his entire fucking back was on fire.

He breathed serenity back into his trembling, twitching body, all the way down into the tips of his shaking fingers, and then he looked up at the man he wasn't entirely sure was his enemy anymore.

The officers who'd busted up the fight had given him a black eye. He studied Seifer out of it with a look that was too contemplative, too perceptive, and he let the familiar sneer creep back over his face, because it was the only expression he knew how to give to this man who might want to be his friend, if he would just let him.

"The fuck are you staring at, Wuss?"

The slight missed its mark. Dincht kept staring at him, speculatively, like he wasn't quite sure what to make of Seifer anymore.

He sat down on the hard bench across from him, slapping his hands down on his knees. "You're tweakin', man. Bein' in here's got you bent out of shape, because they shoved you in D-District, huh?"

Seifer glowered at him.

"I'm just kinda' relieved-that it's botherin' you, I mean. I sorta' thought you didn't give a shit about any of the stuff that went on during the war, you know?"

That would be nice. It would mean he didn't have to inhale nightmare the way he breathed air, taking it in every night in the scents and tastes and touches that all coalesced into her, staring out from that mask of prostitute's face paint that his mother had never worn.

He didn't say anything.

Zell hesitated, leaning back. "I guess maybe I'm thinking that if you're freakin' out in here…maybe you feel bad about some of the stuff that happened. You never act like it, you know? You're always just a big freakin' asshole, and it's like everything's the same way it was before…everything."

Everything was the world turning on him like the traitorous, cringing coward that he was.

Everything was his mother jerking the chain that leashed him to her side, plying his invisible puppet's strings just because she could, just because with a whisper a look a touch-_seifer be a good boy and do what mommy says_-she could make him lick her toes, suck her tits.

Fuck her with his eyes open, because she wanted him to look at her while he did it.

Everything was Quistis Trepe, staring at him like he disgusted her, not because he wasn't Squall Leonhart, but because he was _Seifer Almasy_, the student that used to be her favorite but was now her embarrassing little oops, her colossal fuck-up on an otherwise spotless record.

Seifer closed his eyes exhaustedly. "Are you trying to have a fucking heart to heart with me? Because we're in prison right now-it's not the time to be gay."

"I sorta' thought prison was the one place you were kind of expected to be gay?"

He could hear the smile in Dincht's voice.

"Hey…why'd you jump on that guy, anyway? You got a thing for Quisty or something?"

Fuck him; he wasn't having this conversation again. "Why the hell would you even ask that?"

"I dunno. You were just really pissed; clocked that guy good, man."

"You jumped in right behind me." Seifer pointed out, opening his eyes. "_You _got a thing for her?"

"Nah; Quisty's my friend. Friends don't let friends get groped by nasty pervs. I'm just wonderin' why you did it, is all. I mean, I just wouldn't have thought you'd really give a shit."

"I didn't like the guy's face. I thought I improved it."

Zell shrugged. "You kinda' did. Quisty's pretty though, huh? I mean, if you liked her…I'd get that."

Seifer bent forward, knotting his hands between his knees. "And what if I fucking did? What would be the point? Trepe'd rather stab me in the dick than have anything to do with me. So why would I even bother?"

"'Cause it doesn't work that way; just because she can't stand you doesn't mean you can't have feelings for her."

"And just because you keep telling everyone you're straight doesn't mean you don't secretly nail that faggy cowboy in the ass in the secret area after light's out."

"Maybe if you weren't such a prick, Quisty might like you-ever consider that, Almasy?"

What the fuck was this? Romantic advice from a guy who probably had never even reached second base? "Fuck you."

"Fuck _you_." Zell replied, but it didn't teem with his usual hatred, and suddenly Seifer felt deflated, utterly broken down and empty the way he used to feel when his mother patted him on the head like the good little fucking dog he was, and crawled from his bed.

He didn't have the energy for another verbal smack down like the thousands of exchanges they had passed between them all throughout childhood and beyond, poking and prodding and provoking until patience gave and tempers snapped.

For the first time he could ever remember, Seifer didn't feel like fighting anymore.

Someone smashed a fist down on the door to their cell, bringing Zell's head up.

"You two can go." the bored-looking officer who slid the door aside informed them, and Seifer got stiffly to his feet, arching like he could stretch away the tongue of flame that ate his spinal cord and burned the knotted muscles of his aching shoulders. "Someone paid your bail."

Seifer heard the _click click click _of someone's approaching footsteps, and then Zell hit him on the arm, pointing down the barren hallway toward a flash of blonde that pulled his stomach down somewhere around his balls.

"Hey, she doesn't look happy to see us."

No, Seifer thought grimly, no she did not. She was Instructor Trepe now and not Quistis Trepe, all tight-pulled authority bun and lockstep precision stride, the pendulum swing of her arms clipped like the bar of cold glittering steel she'd stolen from Hyperion to use as her eyes.

It was her I'm-going-to-pull-off-balls look, and she was aiming it at him.

* * *

><p>…Extremely unprofessional conduct…endangerment of fellow team members…failure of the mission…blah blah fucking blah. Seifer didn't bother to keep the irritated look off his face. Next to him, Wuss fidgeted restlessly; he was probably about as intimidated by Squall's sissy posturing as Seifer was, which meant he probably just had to piss or something.<p>

Leonhart had that constipated look on his face again, and when he turned away for a moment-probably to find something he could use to skewer what was left of their testicles after Quistis had finished with them-Zell craned his neck around so he was looking directly at Seifer, his features distorted in the exact forehead-scrunched, I've-gotta-shit glare Squall had just pinned them with.

And fuck him-he wasn't actually _laughing_, was he, like this short little idiot standing next to him was his goddamned friend or something?

Squall flung his head back around, hard enough that Seifer almost expected it to go flying off his neck, and was a little disappointed when it didn't.

"This is funny?"

"Yeah, kinda.'" Seifer replied.

Zell kept his mouth shut.

"It's not _funny _that your interference blew a very important mission. Maybe you shouldn't test for SeeD tomorrow; it's pretty obvious you still can't control yourself.

_Fuck _Leonhart-he couldn't take this away from Seifer. SeeD was all he had left-_Garden _was all he had left. Violence and mercilessness and profit over human emotion-that was all he knew.

It was all he'd ever been good at.

"Hey, it wasn't Seifer's fault. Some guy was groping all over Quisty. What else were we supposed to do?"

"Let Quistis handle it quietly, in a way that didn't sabotage the whole reason you were there."

"He grabbed her tits."

Squall's mouth thinned, but his eyes didn't soften. "That's still not a good enough reason."

"It would have been if they were Rinoa's tits."

Pubes' eyes flashed like he was about to come over the desk at him, and Seifer swung his foot back into the automatic fighting stance he dropped into-let the fucker _bring it _because his entire back still hurt and he just wanted to fall into bed without even showering the stink of smoke and beer and blood off him, but if this pussy-whipped moron wanted to go right now, he was ready.

Instead, Squall dropped his forehead into his hand, rubbing the bridge of his nose like he wanted to peel off layers of skin. "Just get out of my office."

"What about my field exam?" Seifer snapped, clenching his fists. He was taking it, _goddammit_, and if this prick thought he could stop him, then he could pick right back up where he'd been too afraid to start.

His SeeD exam was his last chance, his final opportunity to prove to Quistis that she had not wasted her time on him, that perhaps, buried under all the stratums of snarling, wounded asshole was something more, something better.

It was his last chance to show the world the same thing, and he'd snap Pubes' neck before he let him take that away from Seifer.

Squall didn't lift his face from his hand. "Just be there tomorrow."

Seifer let himself slowly relax down out of his warrior's stance, and the relief that tagged a direct shot to his knees almost folded them underneath him.

"Be on time. Or you're done, Almasy. For good."

**A/N: The poem Quistis is reading is Sunlight and Sea by Alfred Noyes. It's actually been interesting writing this story, because I have never been much of a poetry fan (please understand that this is a vast understatement,) so I've actually had to go scrounging around the internet for poems I thought would appeal to Quistis. Consequently, this fic has forced me to read more poetry than I consider to be humane. Some of it I have, surprisingly, liked, others have made me want to gouge my eyes out and pour bleach in the empty sockets. But I suppose there's nothing too horrible about expanding my horizons as a reader. Oh, and if anyone is wondering where the hell the psych evals went, they'll be back. I plan on scattering a few more throughout the story.**


	8. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

Train Station

Balamb

He was savoring the friction burn warmth of his hands rubbing together and thinking about how cold mornings still were when the first explosion went off, close enough to hurt his ears and jolt shattered cliff pebbles down onto his head.

"Fuck!" Seifer snarled, rolling himself back behind the slope he'd leaned his hip into just a moment ago, ripping his hand open and minorly twisting his left ankle.

Three feet away to his right, Chris Yun's head exploded.

He hadn't liked the asshole all that much anyway, but when Dagan Wright's head did the same thing-just a foot behind him this time-he decided it was time to get the fuck out of Dodge.

Sadie Argon was screaming somewhere nearby-the kind of ululating shriek that went on and on like the never ending torture scream of a train's whistle, jabbing striations of sound like barbed fishhooks into his brain and yanking.

"Shut _up_!" he snapped at her as he rolled, behind another slope this time, grass like soft feather wisps tickling his nose and his ears and his fingertips.

He'd never before been a part of a field exam where cadets actually died. There was always the possibility of course-when they said 'field exam' they meant the fucking field, with winging bullets and shrapnel-spraying grenades and chewed-off arm limbs; Garden could not afford to coddle their would-be SeeDs. During his first exam, Trace Delard had his legs blown off by a mine Seifer's unit had been attempting to disable, and the sight of those half-masticated stumps glittering with the starshine pieces of embedded metal fragments haunted him for months.

But no one had ever died.

He pulled Hyperion and narrowed his eyes against early morning sunlight, trying to spot the sharp shooter dropping wannabes around him like flies.

Somewhere out in that field behind him, Quistis was supervising the exam. Somewhere behind him, Quistis might be down, holding her stomach closed with just the ineffectual dam of her hand.

Fuck it. He broke cover and sprinted toward the domed rooftop of almost-empty train station ahead, the stationary locomotive parked inside it holding the new shipment of weapons meant for B. Garden, the ones Garden intelligence had informed them were in danger of being hijacked by some as-yet unidentified assholes trying to snatch the whole load for themselves.

Secure the train. Guard the shipment until it could be safely delivered.

Easier than shit. That was what he'd told Quistis, wasn't it?

Asshole.

Someone rushed him from his right, aiming their gun at his heart.

He took them down on the run, slashing a line of painter's crimson up their body from groin to sternum, and the guy peeled open around his ribcage in the cinematic slow motion of time-lapse photography.

Behind him, the bullet that ended Sadie Argon's screaming punched a surgeon's precise hole between her too-close brown eyes, and blew out the back of her skull in a confetti blast of red and silver.

But ahead of him-

Ahead of him was Quistis, killing another one with a flick of Save the Queen that pealed like distant thunder, and he ran like his lungs weren't sobbing for oxygen, like his entire back wasn't on fire again, because he didn't fucking care. He didn't fucking care his throat was trying to pinhole close, and he didn't give a shit that underneath him his legs were breaking down into dissolving rubber, trying to quit on him like his overexerting heart.

She was safe. She was safe and still all in one piece and staring at him, across the vermillion-stained field separating them.

In the little sliver of dawn trickling down through open slots in the station's roof, Seifer could see her eyes go wide.

She didn't get his name all the way out. The first syllable slipped free, and then she had to duck, throwing herself onto the track, down next to one blood-sprayed wheel base. The shot she'd been trying to warn him about threw him into a skid, into an ass-over-teakettle roll that spun Hyperion out of his hand and off into distant bushes and it wasn't until he'd climbed shakily back to his feet that he even realized he was not dying, just grazed and grass-stained and _pissed_.

He whipped his elbow into an arc that cracked windpipe, flipping the guy hurtling toward him into an acrobat's tumble that buried him facedown in the bloody grass, choking on the splinters of his larynx.

And then they were on him, three against one, spreading out in a scatter of semi-circle that completely enclosed him.

He showed them his wolf's grin.

They did not know that with Hyperion in his hand, Seifer Almasy was an unstoppable force-generations and generations of warriors trained in the dying art that was the gun blade, and he was it, the fucking cream of the crop, number one on a winner's podium whose stage had only enough room left over for Squall Leonhart, but this-

This he was almost as good at.

His fighting was a ballet of artful dodges and skillful near-misses that overextended his attackers and opened them up to an uppercut here, a fist strike there, because this was the bone crack blood spurt action he had craved all those years spent dawdling in classes where they wouldn't let him _do _anything, and when Garden finally let him loose on the world, they released a shark into pet fish tank.

He choked and punched and back-kicked like a mule, ripping skin and splintering femur and wet-tearing clumps of hair, and when he had nothing else, when one of them had him by the chin in the traditional neck break position Garden had taught them all, Seifer sank his teeth in to the bone.

He spat a chunk of thumb into the grass, and kicked the guy who'd grabbed him in the balls hard enough to spew red-tinged vomit across the field.

Then he was away, he was out, and running back toward her. He stooped to grab Hyperion without slowing, tossing its bulk across one shoulder.

He forgot his throbbing back and his trembling, cramping legs, because his world became a tunnel that shuttled him directly to her, on her knees in front of that gore-spattered wheel with her whip coiled in front of her, and if he could just reach her, if he could just put himself between her and the fatal rainfall of bullets chewing up the field behind his drumming heels-

He didn't even care if he passed.

This test that was everything to him, this test that was his final, last ditch effort to show Seifer he could still make something of himself, that if he couldn't be her knight he could damn well still be _something_-

This test didn't matter.

She mattered. Her eyes and her smiling lips were what counted, and it wasn't until here, it wasn't until now, that Seifer realized this was not just some junior cadet's hard-on for his long-legged goddess of a teacher.

Hell of a time for an epiphany.

His scramble up grassy knoll lasted forever; it was the last one he had to crest before he reached her, and it went on for an eternity.

Then he was up and over, and he skidded into her little hiding place like he was sliding for home.

"Get onto the train."

Fuck that.

There were still more out there, waiting to kill her.

Quistis got to her feet, uncoiling Save the Queen. "Seifer, get on the train; we have to secure it."

"Are you fucking kidding me? What are you going to do-take on the rest of them all by yourself?"

"Instructor Danglin is-"

"Coughing up one of his lungs right now. I passed him on my way over. Most of his intestines are hanging out so, you know, I don't think he's going to be a whole lot of help."

"There are still cadets left." she replied stubbornly, her eyes going cold, and he wondered if that was just her warrior's face she'd slipped on, or if she'd junctioned Shiva again.

What was she going to forget about him this time?

He stood up, edging half in front of her, trying to do it subtly enough that she didn't notice.

"Seifer. Go."

She closed her eyes.

Firaga exploded from her veins.

She walked forward holding a fistful of magic like blazing torchlight in each hand, and he saw someone's head flare in a burst of orange brighter than the sun.

God_dammit_, Trepe-

Seifer hefted Hyperion, and chased after her.

To their left, someone was screaming, on and on and on, until he wanted to take the fucker's head off himself-the other team's or one of theirs, he didn't care, so long as it stopped.

He followed Quistis like her shadow, deflecting blows and turning parries, re-directing strikes and lunges and the bullet he took down the side of his calf, creasing the skin there and incising his pant leg. He thrust and blocked and stabbed and shot like a machine, and while he was there, while he danced his spirals of artery-cut death around her, nothing touched her.

And then suddenly he wasn't; he missed an opening, left a gap, and Thundara blasted Quistis off her feet, onto her back beneath a sky that ran red like the grass under his feet.

_Shit_.

He kneeled beside her, his coat spreading out in an arc of silver around his boots, and when she didn't move, when she didn't even twitch, Seifer's chest crushed his heart, and it went as still as her pale lips. "Quistis. _Fuck_. _Quistis_!" He lowered his shaking hand to her mouth, and thank Hyne she was breathing-oh fuck for a second he'd thought she _wasn't _and his relief sat him down hard next to her, his gloved hand on her forehead.

He didn't know how it had gotten there, but it was stroking pieces of sweat-plastered blonde off her temples, and Seifer watched it as he tried to think how he could get them both back to the station without getting his ass shot off.

Nothing for it but to go balls to the wall, he supposed.

He tossed Quistis over one shoulder, Hyperion over the other, and took off at a dead sprint, winching one arm down over Quistis' limply swinging legs to keep her in place when she kept trying to slide off.

Someone must have finally taken out the sniper, or he'd be dead by now.

Finally. He shouldn't have to do _all _the fucking work around here.

Seifer reached the station with all his body parts still intact and set her down less gently than he'd intended, but fuck it he was _tired_, and light as she was, deadweight was still deadweight, and he was pretty sure that last hero's charge across gory grasslandhad re-opened his stitches.

Kadowaki was going to be pissed. She'd just re-stitched them after the bar fight last night.

She'd be more pissed if he'd left Quistis behind to die.

Panting, he looked up in time to see one of the testing cadets take a bullet through the heart.

They sagged back out through the car door frame they'd stepped up into and fell at his feet, blinking up at Seifer one final reflexive time before their eyes became flat gray glass forever.

Shit-they were already on the goddamned train.

He couldn't just leave her here.

He didn't have anything stocked that might revive her-he was pretty much shit at casting anyway, preferring the more intimate brutality of hand to hand blade to blade combat that casting couldn't give him, so he leaned down over her and did something that made him want to eat the tip of Hyperion.

Seifer slapped her.

All the horrible, fucked-up shit he'd done, all the people he'd killed, the lives he'd destroyed-and this was the thing he regretted most of all? This head rock that left his hand print on her cheek and scraped her lips against chipped cement where his strike forced her face down against it? _This _was what he would take back, if he had his choice of anything he had ever done, if he could turn back time and reverse anything he wanted?

It was. He slid his hand along the mark he'd left behind as she blinked her eyes open at him, turning the slide into a caress that she was probably still too blurry to understand.

He took his hand away before she could figure it out, and pulled Quistis to both feet as cognizant thought began to trickle back into her eyes, and when she stumbled and had to catch herself on his chest, he pretended she'd done it on purpose.

"They're on the train already!" he yelled to her over the boom of a gunshot, and then he turned with Hyperion in his hand, and leapt.

* * *

><p>He caught the first rung of step ladder hand railing, and pulled himself up.<p>

The corridor he plastered himself flat to held just the squid ink of shadows tinted with the creeping fingers of sunrise beginning to make their way through the window on the far end, and Seifer trailed cautiously along it, tip-toeing as best he could in his heavy boots.

Behind him, he heard Quistis mount the steps and enter the hallway as he reached the first bend.

He came around it with Hyperion slanted at the ready in front of him, but there was no one.

Just more of those shadows, reminding him of the ones that dripped from her eyes every time she smiled.

Quistis touched his back softly with her hand, and he turned in time to catch the hand signal she flashed him. _The one on the right-yours. _She was indicating two cargo hold doors in front of them, and he broke his with a front kick that ripped it right off the hinges. It was just thin sheet metal, and tore easily around the heel he smashed into it; he was inside before she caved hers in with Fira, Hyperion describing circles of come-and-get-it defense pose before he realized it was empty.

No weapons, and no mysterious hijacker team waiting to jump him.

He ducked back out into the corridor, and saw that she'd experienced the same.

They continued on down the passage that way, Seifer shouldering his way to the front again-he didn't give a shit if she thought that was rude-blowing hinges and opening holes of smoking crater into each hold door they passed, each one vacant and echoing.

He was so busy watching for their next target, so focused on what the hell he was going to do if his next was empty and hers was full that he almost missed the snout of gun barrel that poked around the corner at him.

Save the Queen kissed its tip, twisted like a striking rattler, and yanked it from the hand of the man who'd tried to kill him; Seifer recovered with a lunge that shoved Hyperion through the bulge of shoulder muscle that was all he could reach as the guy turned and tried to make a run for it, angling his blade up and in so it punched through jaw line and exited his mouth in a second tongue of red-smeared steel.

He dislodged Hyperion, and stepped over the body.

"This is-this is-"

Seifer spun back around to find Quistis on her knees beside the dead man, one hand over her mouth.

Her eyes held the same bleak horror they'd flashed when she realized her former student had become her worst nightmare.

"What?"

"This is one of my students."

Seifer squinted down at his open, staring eyes and the ruined sweep of jaw hinge hanging loose in a puppet's eerie gape. Guy did look kind of familiar-the blonde on his right, the one always staring at Quistis' ass? It was hard to tell through all the blood and flapping strands of wrecked sinew, not to mention he pretty much made it a point to not pay attention to anything in class that didn't have tits.

Seifer crouched across from her, frowning. "You sure?"

"Yes-it's Sate Rawson. He's…_was _a fifth year. Why would…why would he do this?"

For one long, long moment that snarled his bowels around a knot of ice like the one that chewed through the walls of Seifer's gut and down into his testicles-_the shadows were wearing his mother's smile again they were wearing her smile but not her eyes and please please don't come any closer please don't-_Quistis looked utterly broken.

Shattered, the pieces of her strewn around beneath his clumsy fingers like mismatched jigsaw pieces.

He didn't know how to put her back together again.

She looked up at him with eyes as raw as his mother's when Ultimecia let her control relax for just a moment, when she slipped her slave's collar long enough for mother and son to know one another again-

Long enough for mother and son, Matron and boy Seifer to feel his dick inside her, and the convulsive orgasm clench of her teeth in his shoulder.

"Quistis." Seifer touched her knee, bringing her head up.

He swallowed around the lump of smoldering boulder the heartbroken squint of her eyes put in his throat.

And then she looked down at his hand, and suddenly she was Instructor Trepe again, Mercenary Trepe with the frozen eyes and the coil of whip like deadly adder pooled at her feet, tight-wrapped around the absolute steadiness of her right hand.

She stood, and he rose with her, and for just a moment, for just a semi second of instant he would go to sleep savoring that night, something like understanding passed between them.

Mercenary to mercenary, broken man to shattered woman-something had clicked into perfect machine-oiled synch between them, and now when Seifer moved, Quistis glided with him.

When he came around the next bend into the ambush waiting for them, Hyperion took down the first, Save the Queen the second, and the third-the third went down seamlessly, the slash cut of gun blade that sundered his legs at the knee cap throwing him forward into barbed whip noose. His head toppled and spurted and rolled over between them, and then the corridor spat flame like reaching tongue, and Seifer's world flash burned away in a roar of incinerating red.

* * *

><p>Quistis stumbled through the smoke coughing.<p>

Behind her she could hear but not see Seifer, using language that would horrify a sailor and slapping at the cinder specks of spell burning holes into his coat sleeves. The blast of Blizzara she sent down the hall to neutralize Firaga sent up puffs of white like steam, hissing where the two contradictory elements commingled, and she staggered through it, wiping her blurring eyes.

She couldn't see anyone ahead of her, just the flaccid rag doll of the caster she'd ripped open with a nimble twist of Save the Queen. Another B. Garden cadet, although not one of her students this time, thank Hyne.

She did not understand what was happening. They were all on the same side, all _together _in this, and she could not comprehend, did not want to even attempt to fathom why their own were suddenly turning against them. What possible reason, what possible _motivation _could explain this?

Was it her? Had she failed again, the way she had so massively, tragically let Seifer down two years ago, her incompetence leading him straight into the arms of that monster wearing the mask of Matron's pretty young face?

There was a part of her that had always wondered, that had always been too afraid to fully consider whether she really deserved the Instructor's License they had re-appointed her after the war. Hard to turn down a world-renowned war hero's request to have her status as one of Garden's teachers re-activated-hard to turn down _anything _desired by any one of the six heroes who'd rescued the world from the sorceress' intended fate. But perhaps...perhaps they should have.

She did not feel like a hero.

Standing here in the guts and gizzards remains of the men and women she had nurtured and trained and brought forth to their full potential-

Quistis felt only small and empty and skeletal, hollowed-out inside like the vacancy behind dead marble eyes.

Seifer lurched out of the smoke and crashed into her back, sending Quistis reeling forward. She slipped in blood and fell, her progress jerking to a halt when his hand snagged her elbow and held her, dangling, in the crushing vise his fingers formed around it.

He pulled her back to her feet without any visible effort, and for just a moment, she remembered a scrawny little blonde fighting the much taller child Irvine until Matron yanked them apart and made both boys shake hands. Seifer had spit on Irvine's feet as soon as she turned her back, wielding his stick-sword with all the gravity of a full-grown man riding to battle.

He'd been so small then-short enough that only Sis-Ellone-could get away with teasing him about it, and now he towered her, his broad-shouldered physique straining the seams of his dilapidated old trench coat.

She was glad he was on her side, this time.

"Where the hell do we go now?" He smeared soot down his cheek with one sleeve, muttering something foul when the whole thing came away black.

He was breathing heavily, panting like a wounded animal, and Quistis held back the sigh that tried to slip between her lips.

He shouldn't be here-she had tried to convince Squall one final time to ban Seifer from the exam, to no avail; part of her was fairly certain that after his involvement in the brawl that landed both him and Zell in jail, Squall couldn't care less if his old rival came back in pieces.

Which was turning into a distinct possibility.

"The engine room. It should have some kind of cargo manifesto; we'll use it to figure out which car the weapons are stored in."

He touched her chin, frowning. His fingers came away red. "You're bleeding."

He was a massive collection of bruises and cuts and torn-apart stitches, and he was concerned about a little scratch she'd acquired diving for cover under the train?

"It's nothing. Just-"

The explosion slammed ribcage and lungs and heart together in one bruising collision of sound and blood taste and spiraling light-

And she hit the floor in a sprawl that went off in her head like a second detonation and Hyne everything hurt everything _hurt she couldn't breathe she couldn't feel she couldn't _see-

Silver mirror curve flashed, and flashed again.

She huddled in a ball, holding her ringing ears.

Around and around her the dirty gray of his coat hem flared and rippled and spun-it was the only thing she could watch from her vantage point, the only thing that made any sense to her, and she let it take her through loops of intricate fight scene, blurry as a poorly-shot action movie.

She couldn't tell if she was all still in one piece anymore. Everything felt warped, dismembered, but she didn't know if that was just her, or the entire world fragmenting around her.

_-and they couldn't put quistis back together again-_

No-that wasn't how the story went-

In the story the prince saved the princess and they rode off into the sunset together-_tell it again matron we want to hear another one_-and the world did not end like this, in fire and ice and pounding blood rush and twirling gray-

Someone was saying her name, and she could not tell what they were asking her, what they _wanted _from her, but-

They sounded scared.

They sounded terrified, and some still-working part of Quistis Trepe realized this was bad, that this was not a voice that shook or trembled or wavered toward panic-

Am I dying-

_-am I dying she wondered because the next wave closed over her head and pushed her down and seifer was screaming but he couldn't swim, he couldn't swim and neither could she and there was no one else-_

_Am I dying-_

_-am I dying she wondered because the water was in her mouth now and she could taste salt and sea slime and new penny copper from the slice of tongue meat her teeth bit off-_

She was airborne now.

Airborne and flying and very warm, but she still couldn't see, she still couldn't hear-

She still couldn't tell if she was alive, coughing ocean water onto Matron's sunny beach-

Or was she still under that blanket layer of suffocating sea, watching him through folds of crashing breaker, running for help-_get help please don't let me die don't let me _die _I'm _scared_-_

"Shh you're fine hold still Trepe don't move-"

_-you're ok now quistis quistis you're ok right quistis look at me-_

She stopped trying to figure out which ending she'd gotten, the princess' happily-ever-after or the witch's miserable death, and when she let go of trying, everything faded around her.

* * *

><p>The grenade had ripped off the side of her face.<p>

Seifer stumbled and almost fell as he reached the car door opening and leapt, landing in the gravel with a jolt that felt like both his fucking knee caps shattered on impact.

The flap of cheek skin that hung loose and wrinkled down to her jaw fluttered in the breeze; he could see cords of exposed sinew and the shiny white seeds of her teeth, and his entire meager breakfast came rushing back up his throat.

He turned his face away to vomit into the border line of grass past the toes of his boots.

When he started, he couldn't stop, and Seifer had to set her down in the field, heaving until there was nothing left inside of him, until even the acid burn of the stomach bile he spit up was all gone, all used up.

"SOMEBODY GET THE FUCK OVER HERE!" he screamed, putting every hour upon hour of endless weapons drills and the nonstop war shrieks they had to practice into his command-he didn't know if it would even do any fucking good, because maybe there was no one left alive out here-maybe they were the only two left and it was just him and Quistis, just useless, unjunctioned Seifer and dying Quistis-

But some fucker was pelting toward him now, and he could have kissed the bastard when he saw his hands go shiny with Curaga.

_Fuck you, Trepe, don't die, Quistis don't die-_

_-QUISTIS SOMEBODY HELP QUISTIS DON'T LET HER DROWN-_

Everything hurt-everything fucking _hurt _but he couldn't let it roll over him, couldn't let it take him under, because he had to _know_-

_-is she drowned is she ok-_

Curaga blazed and blazed and blazed, like the sun over that beach, and he shut his eyes, because it reminded him of-

Fireworks in the night_-ooh pretty look how pretty_-fireworks over her parade float_-seifer come here boy mommy needs you-_fireworks inside his fucking _head_, beating him with the fists his mother had used when he displeased her_-but this isn't my mother you're not _my mother_ you bitch-_

Curaga arced and flared again, and Seifer closed his eyes.

He couldn't watch anymore.

* * *

><p>Balamb Garden<p>

One Week Later

"So Everts fakes, right? And he comes in and gets the guy right across the face, so Bilden goes into this awesome double leg takedown and gets him on the ground-"

Quistis tuned out the rest of Zell's enthusiastic re-telling of some cage fight he had gone to watch in Balamb last night. Barbarian sports, if you asked her-odd coming from a trained killer, but the blood she spilled and the heads she cracked were out of necessity for the preservation of her life, and not meant as entertainment for the roaring crowd of unevolved beasts egging her on.

Irvine, however, was clearly enthralled, and Rinoa and Selphie were already engaged in a conversation extolling the virtues of the movie they had forced Irvine and Squall to rent and watch with them last night, a ridiculous excuse for cinema that she had no intention of ever seeing based off their glowing synopsis. Sparkling vampires and cross-breed mutant babies indeed-what kind of socially-repressed fourteen-year-old dreamt up that kind of nonsense anyway, let alone a full-grown adult?

Squall merely grunted when she tried out a tentative smile in his direction, so she let her eyes slide away, across the cafeteria and over to a head of familiar blonde, one foot up on the table he sat alone at, the other stretched out in front of him.

Quistis touched the new scar on her cheek, just a faded half moon of shiny pink now.

Kadowaki had done a good job on it; she could hardly see it anymore in her bathroom mirror where she studied it each morning, the section of cheek Garden's physician had fused back to the bone and then injected with Curaga to keep the scarring down not even as pronounced as Squall's scar, or Seifer's. Kadowaki had assured her that with a few more administrations she would barely even notice it anymore, and she could recall sitting there on that cold exam table, her legs too weak with relief to hop down yet, wondering why neither Seifer nor Squall had opted for the same treatment.

Maybe they had kept the disfigurements to remind themselves how much they hated one another.

She wouldn't have thought they'd really need the refresher.

She watched Seifer's hand slip furtively under his table, watched the spiky plume of a familiar tail drag enthusiastically across the rectangle of floor tile it poked out across, and smiled.

Angelo could soften even the hardest of hearts. Even so, she never would have guessed the dog's aptitude for parting humans-even Zell-from their lunches would have extended to Seifer.

Then again, she never would have guessed it had been him who'd carried her out of the train and onto the grass outside where someone who was actually junctioned could heal her, either. She'd picked that little tidbit up through third party re-tellings of the dramatic SeeD exam, and though she supposed she shouldn't be surprised-he'd been right next to her when it happened, after all-she was.

She'd half-expected him to leave her behind, and carry out the rest of Garden's orders without her. Passing his SeeD exam had to carry some significance for him, considering how surprisingly hard he'd been working toward it in the last few months, and it wasn't possible that saving her was more important to him.

As it was, his SeeD status teetered on a very fine precipice.

The results of the test were hashed out by a panel consisting of Squall and the instructors who had overseen the exam, with Garden's commander getting final say. He could not elevate someone to SeeD status that the instructors unanimously thought should fail, but he could veto a cadet he did not feel was worthy of the rank and force an official vote among the exam supervisors. It took a sixty percent majority to ovverride his decision, although generally it didn't progress that far.

She had argued heavily in favor of Seifer, of course; it was the least she could do. Instructor Danner had tentatively thrown his lot in with her, but Instructors Bryce and Landen had passionately disagreed; it was a very small panel this time around considering three of the supervising instructors had died during the bloodiest of any field exam she could remember, which meant it would more than likely fall to Squall to determine Seifer's fate.

That obviously did not bode well for him.

She did understand their reservations-Quistis had a personal stake in it and they did not; Seifer had violated direct orders several times, first her own when he followed her back out onto the field instead of securing the weapons cache as she'd told him to, and then Garden's when he completely abandoned the mission to rush her to emergency medical attention. Abandoning a job to rescue a comrade was not exactly recommended in the SeeD handbook, although most of them had done it at some point or another. It was just one more example, however, Instructor Bryce pointed out, that Cadet Almasy could not be expected to follow orders. Ever.

He had, however, inadvertently completed the mission; the hijackers he'd cut his way through to get to her were the last of them, and so in the end Seifer had actually been the one to obtain the objective Garden had set for the group of aspiring SeeDs, if somewhat accidentally.

She was pretty sure that didn't matter to them.

Today was the day results were posted-even she didn't know the final decision Squall had reached, and she wondered, looking at him now, if he was nervous.

He did not look like it, but that didn't mean anything.

Across from her, Zell finished his story and stood up, heading off to-she assumed, anyway-beg more lunch off the line of servers doling out what Garden's cooks kept insisting was actual food, a claim Quistis very seriously doubted.

Instead, he made a beeline for Seifer's table, and she let her chin fall into her hand as she watched her student's head come up, the lights overhead gilding his scar in the unflattering cancer gray of ugly fluorescent that only Rinoa could somehow manage to make look good.

That was an odd development that she'd noticed lately; a conversation here or there that did not end in red-faced taunts or unnecessarily violent fisticuffs that generally required outside intervention before someone ended up with no head-always very brief conversations, to be sure, but still. Quistis wondered where it had come from; Seifer and Zell had butted heads since infancy, their personalities blending about as well as the proverbial clash of oil and water.

She supposed a bar fight started over a woman's breasts was as good a starting point for a tentative ceasefire between old enemies as any.

Selphie, apparently noticing where Quistis' attention had drifted, leaned around Rinoa with a confidant whisper only slightly less audible than the wounded animal bray Zell had let loose earlier that afternoon when he was informed that the cafeteria was again out of hot dogs.

"Rinoa says it's this big, Quisty." she hissed, holding her hands out in a gesture Quistis assumed was supposed to mimic the approximate length of Seifer's…well.

Her cheeks went up in flame like the explosion that had blown apart her face, and Selphie winked, and flashed her a thumbs up before she could turn away.

* * *

><p>Chicken Wuss was flapping his yap at him again.<p>

Punch out a few drunks with the guy and share a night of incarceration, and suddenly you were his bestest fucking friend or something.

The really sad thing was, a part of Seifer, the splinters of shattered boy she had smashed under her mother's lips and hands and eyes-the part that was not gangrene with corruption-

That part of him wanted a friend, just a little. Even an idiot like Dincht, motor-mouthed dickface with thoughts about as significant as the shrunken balls Leonhart must have handed over to Rinoa a long time ago, the little blonde moron he'd hated since before he could even really understand what it was to loathe another human being. Everyone loved Zell-he wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, but he was a gentleman, a clown, a legend, the whole world's fucking buddy, and Seifer had hated him because no one else really did.

And the idiot had brought him hot dogs while he was lying in the infirmary slipping out of the life and death dream haze colored like her lips, like the razor points of her long fingernails-he'd have gladly strangled Seifer with his own dick if it was the only available weapon with which to kill him, and he'd brought him fucking hot dogs.

The fact that Dincht made it as hard as fucking possible to dislike him just made Seifer cling all the harder to his detestation. He dug in with everything he had left over from the war, spite and bitterness and festering rage wrapped in the frail layers of the façade he wore like his threadbare trench coat, the face of old Seifer, arrogant Seifer, kiss-my-ass-because-I'm-better-than-all-of-you Seifer. That was the Seifer he wanted back, the Seifer with the untroubled sleep and the baby skin forehead, the Seifer that swaggered down Garden's halls like he fucking owned them, Raijin and Fuijin at his back and half the female populace at his feet.

But he was so fucking, fucking tired. Hate wore on you; wrath drained you. Fury picked the fresh scabs of healing scars, and when you got to the bottom, when you dug down to the damaged knot of tissue and death smell putrefaction beneath it all, suddenly you started to question whether it was all worth it anymore.

So when this man he'd hated his entire life sat down across from him, yammering about something Seifer opted to mostly tune out, he just sat there.

He sat there, and for perhaps the first time in his life, did not contemplate what an improvement the dent of fist shape he could leave behind in Dincht's face would make.

"Hey, you pass your SeeD test?"

He glanced at the clock on the wall above Dincht's head, and his stomach tightened. Results should be getting posted right about now and he could barely stand to think about walking up to that paper-hung corkboard with all those rows and rows of neat-typed lines that had never contained his name. It was probably too much to ask that he had passed this time anyway, with that prick Leonhart heading up the board that would decide who attended the SeeD ball tonight as a guest of honor and who skulked along the edges with their head down, sulkily spiking the punch when no one was looking with something that would give everyone the shits.

Not that he'd ever done that.

He clenched his hands into fists under the table. "I don't know."

"It's noon; they should have everyone's results posted. You should go check."

"You should go talk to someone who's interested in whatever the fuck it is you've been jabbering about for the past eight hundred years. Good luck with that."

"Don't be so freakin' touchy, man. Quisty said you did good."

'Quisty' had only said that because her conscience would not allow her to actively picket against a man who'd saved her ass. Otherwise, she'd be burning him at the stake the way the rest of them no doubt had, squabbling about his inability to follow whatever shit-headed orders Garden always got a fly up its ass about if they were not followed to the T.

Following orders like mindless hordes of wannabe Leonhart robots did not breed soldiers that went in there and got the job done.

It spawned needle-dicked pansies that couldn't take a leak without permission, paper pushers that knew every regulation and procedure and footnote in the whole damn SeeD manual but didn't understand that what the fight was really all about was blood and exposed intestine coil and some fucker's throat meat in your teeth when you had nothing else to hit him with.

They didn't get that war was not a tidy little annotation in some handbook. They didn't, could never comprehend that missions went sideways, that jobs went fucked-up-the-ass askew sometimes, and you just had to make shit up as you went along.

He stood up, hiding his shaking hands from Wuss, who was leaning back with his feet up on the table, cracking his knuckles.

He left without saying a word. Out of the corner of one eye, he thought he saw Quistis glance at him and then away, but he didn't look back; if he looked back he was done, he was dead, because he'd see in her face what he kept telling himself as he shuffled mechanically along the hallway, Hyperion an anchor line he gripped with knuckles white as the bone grinning up through her flayed-apart skin.

He hadn't made it. His name wasn't on that goddamned list-again.

_-you are a _failure _seifer mommy's so disappointed in you you were supposed to be the best I got the little boy child the little _fuck up_ and not the man-_

His feet took him around and around familiar routes, past everyday scenes that he didn't watch.

He didn't want to see them pointing. Laughing. There goes Garden's most famous fuck-up, the most spectacular disappointment in the entire history of SeeD-a man with storybook talent and the protagonist looks to back it all up-

A man circling the storm drain like dew-molded leaves, all dried-up and skeletal, compost refuse.

He let the cadets milling around the sheets of typewritten paper in front of him block them, let everyone swirl and shriek and victory dance around him, staring down at the tips of his boots like the answer was somewhere in their scuffed toes.

They were capped in dried blood.

Probably hers.

Studying it made him think of blast-sheared cheek skin and limp deadweight, and finally he took his eyes away, raising them to the board that was the only place he had left to stare.

He couldn't see anything over their heads and hands and open-mouthed idiot's grins, and suddenly he couldn't _stand _not knowing, and Seifer pushed his way to the front.

He scanned and scanned and scanned, going over it once, twice, three times-there was nothing, just blank white space where his name should have been, just as he'd expected.

His fist and then his heart crumpled, and he stood there with his hand open and dangling, his fingers twitching like they weren't sure what to do with themselves.

He wanted to vomit. He wanted to indiscriminately kill, stabbing and gutting and decapitating the smiling heads bobbing and surging around him, until their blood leaked like his hope, until they could understand, even a little, how he felt right now.

And then his eye caught something near the bottom, and he shoved a red-headed boy whose balls probably hadn't even dropped yet out of his way.

There it was. His eyes had staggered right over it, convinced they weren't going to see it anyway, but _there it fucking was_- S. Almasy, ID #38771599-

SeeD.

He'd made it.

He'd _fucking made it_.

He spun like there was someone waiting for him, someone's outstretched arms like the ones the girl to his right ran into, and for one brief moment, his elation popped like a balloon.

For just a moment, he'd expected Raijin to lift him in a bear hug that crushed his ribs and popped the new stitches holding him together. For just a moment, he'd pictured Fuijin standing next to his friend, adjusting her eye patch and the comma mark of gray over her good eye, smiling at him.

And then he realized there was someone, standing near the back, someone he recognized with a jolt like lightning through his chest-

She was smiling at him.

He shouldered through the crowd toward her.

The scar on her cheek was almost gone, just a faint, faint brand of long-ago violence now, but it wouldn't have taken away from the radiant glow suffusing those graceful sweeps of cheekbone anyway.

"Congratulations, Seifer." she said, and then somehow-maybe it was just the crowd piling up against his back, knocking into him from behind, but somehow, someway-

She ended up in his arms.

He lifted her in the bear hug Raijin would have used to crack his ribs, picking Quistis right up off her feet, pressing his face into the side of her neck, and the exuberance that peeled his mother's razor nails from his soul hurt his cheeks with the grin it forced his lips apart in.

She smelled nice. He didn't think Trepe seemed like the type to wear perfume-that was a luxury, not a necessity-so it was probably just her shampoo or something, but it sank all the way in like a memory of rain-blurred sandcastles, and he knew he'd be thinking about it tonight when he went to sleep.

He'd be thinking about this-curve of breast and arch of hip and uncharacteristic squeak of astonishment-for a long time.

When he set her back down, Quistis' whole face was red.

"You didn't suck Leonhart's dick to make this happen, did you?"

She crossed her arms, the blood slowly climbing back down from her cheeks. "No, Seifer-surprisingly, you passed on your own merits."

He couldn't stop fucking smiling at her. He probably looked like an idiot. Worse-he probably looked like Wuss.

"It'll be interesting to see you in a uniform for once." She turned and began to walk away, striding off down the hall with little _click click clicks _of her boot heels.

He followed her. "By 'interesting' do you mean fodder for a night in with a glass of wine and your dildo?"

"It's like you're a mind reader."

"That was my second career choice."

God_dammit _he had not been this happy in a long time.

He wondered what she would do if he took the hand swinging casually back and forth along her side, if he just slid his fingers right through hers and didn't let go, didn't let up-

But that was just his uncharacteristic joviality talking, of course. She'd punch him in the teeth if he was lucky, lower if he was not.

Seifer peeled off down a side corridor before he could do something stupid. "See you tonight, Instructor."

For the first time in years, she would not be his instructor anymore. They were equals now-comrades, and he wondered what she thought of that.

He wondered if the pride in her face had all been for her, self-gratifying triumph that finally, _finally _she had achieved what no one else possibly could have-

Or if a little of it had been for him, too.

* * *

><p>Squall frowned at her from the mirror he deftly knotted his uniform tie in front of. "You feeling ok?"<p>

In the wood-framed circle of sterling silver showing him the gold-trimmed arc of his sleeve cuff, he could see sweat-stippled forehead, pale as bone.

Rinoa smiled weakly at him. "I'm fine."

She looked nauseated, not fine, but he decided not to push it. Rinoa would dig herself out of her own grave to attend a SeeD ball-it was 'their' place, the first moment she had realized she might possibly come to love him, and attendance was strictly mandatory for the both of them.

He tried pointing out once that 'their' place also consisted of a sunrise-stained field, the quiet dockside nook where they'd first officially consummated their relationship, the train station where they'd indulged in their first public display of affection, and a bench in front of Ma Dincht's they'd once watched the sun rise from, sharing a pastry he'd 'confiscated' from Garden's cafeteria that Rinoa insisted was the best thing she'd ever tasted but in reality reminded him a little of a combination of ash and old feet.

Needless to say, that had not gone over very well. The implication that they had so many 'places' as to render them mundane had earned him an entire week on the couch in his office, seven days of purgatory spent fending off Zell and Irvine, who dropped by routinely to make fun of him.

He watched her closely as he finished dressing himself, shaking his cuffs out in flawless lines of iron-creased perfection.

She'd been looking like this more and more lately, flushed and clammy, cadaver sallow everywhere that was not the two clown circles of fever burning in her cheeks, and worry chewed him down to the marrow.

She wouldn't let him take her to Kadowaki. He was just a few days shy of slinging her over his shoulder and carrying her down there anyway, screaming and pounding his back the whole way.

Squall finished adjusting everything and stepped away from the mirror, giving his tie one final twitch.

Rinoa came into his arms with a smile, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him. "You look nice."

He hugged her against him, burying his face in her hair. He may have imagined it, but she seemed to be using him to prop herself up, making the lean hard line of his chest into a crutch that held her upright on legs she was not quite certain would support her anymore. The drumbeat of his heart kicked over into the split second flat line of absolute terror, and then he breathed composure back into his body, slow in and out breaths of forced calmness that relaxed him against her.

She was just sick; some kind of innocuous, everyday virus like the flu. No need to bend himself out of shape over it-she'd vomit into the toilet a few times, he'd hold her hair out of the way and stroke her back, and then they would move on with their lives. She would once more be the vivacious, pretty young woman he loved and not the dead-eyed zombie that shambled around their quarters like a freshly-exhumed corpse, unconvincingly reassuring him she was all right.

Except this had been going on for weeks now.

Except when she looked up into his eyes tonight, smiled and told him she loved him, it felt like she might be saying good-bye.

* * *

><p>Selphie had her video camera out again.<p>

Quistis sighed and turned away from that blinking strobe light of red, taking a sip of her non-alcoholic cider and letting her eyes roam. They directed themselves-as did most of the female stares in the room-to the head of slicked-back blonde that was Seifer Almasy, soaring over most of the other cadets mingling and dancing and flirting with one another.

He looked-she hated to admit-magnificent. The SeeD uniform he had been denied so long fit perfectly across broad shoulders and heavily-muscled arms, subtly highlighting everything in a way that had the group of giggling fourth years across from him ingesting courage and slyly fixing the skirts of their uniforms so they rode higher than was strictly standard issue. Much higher, actually.

He would probably leave with one of them.

She would go back to her dorm alone, perfectly upright and balanced and sober, as per usual.

There was nothing wrong with that, of course. She liked waking up to her self-respect and not the tousled head of some near-stranger she could barely remember through the pounding dragon roar of her hangover-

But she was still a woman, and the romance of the whole affair-the twinkling fairy lights and dancing couples and electric union of gazes meeting and holding across the ballroom-affected her, just a little.

It would have been nice, just once, to share one of those moments, the frozen half second of stopped world, the almost eternity in which there existed just two people in a room full of them, the kind of moment Rinoa and Squall seemed to experience far more than was normal.

She glanced up, and noticed Seifer staring at her.

That wasn't exactly the kind of connection she wanted to make; Quistis looked away, and Irvine's girlfriend charged her like a T-Rexaur, wielding her camera like the nunchaku she carried into battle.

"Quisty, look!" She tilted the view screen of the recording device so Quistis could see it, and the electronic snow of amphorous shapes she could not quite make out resolved into clean, sculpted lines.

"Selphie, that isn't-"

"Seifer's butt!"

"Oh Hyne-Selphie, I am not getting involved with Seifer Almasy. Not for one night, or even one second."

"Fine." She pouted a little, but toggled to the main menu and selected another clip of video. "This is a crotch shot of Gaiden Marks-looks like he's packing a whole Abyss Worm in there, but you kinda' have to just look at him from the waist down, because above that, bleargh!"

"Selphie-"

"Whatcha' girls lookin' at?" Zell asked, popping his head over Quistis' shoulder. "Whoa!" He smashed his face into Quistis' neck. "That's some dude's penis! Nasty!"

"You did decide to view a video taken by Selphie." Quistis pointed out. "Some part of you had to know what you were probably getting into."

"Irvy!" Selphie waved cheerily to her boyfriend with her free hand; he was standing in the center of a loose semi-circle of rapt cadets, re-counting some tale that had them all hanging on every word, tall and professionally handsome in the pressed SeeD uniform Quistis rarely saw him wear, his distinctive hat riding low on his forehead. He gave a distracted return wave, then did a sudden double take that had Quistis twisting her head around to try and see what Zell had just done now.

He was innocent, as far as she could tell-surprisingly enough-and it wasn't until Irvine flashed his ladykiller grin and gave her a thumbs up that she realized his second glance had been for her.

The heat that scaled her neck scorched her cheeks, and she turned away with a shy smile, giving him a perfunctory wave back.

There was technically no official dress code for the SeeD ball, but most SeeDs traditionally wore their uniforms anyway, particularly those who had just been inducted into the elite mercenary ranks. Most missions required a certain amount of stealth, and it went without saying that the SeeD uniform was highly recognizable and generally set aside for civilian attire that could be far more easily integrated into society. Usually, Quistis carefully brushed and ironed and polished hers just like everyone else, donning it like she did everything else; with the organized precision with which she approached the rest of her life, making sure every button and crease and mirror glossed medal aligned perfectly with one another, but tonight-

Tonight, she had let Selphie talk her into the sheath of turquoise she had critically studied in her dresser mirror from every possible angle, dissecting and scrutinizing and second guessing, until she'd almost shoved the whole thing back into her closet in a shiny pile of wadded-up blue. The resulting battle that ensued after she'd suggested such an action out loud to her friend had nearly ended in the loss of her right eye, which Selphie had almost taken out with a viciously-wielded curling iron.

Their final battle with Ultimecia had not been nearly so epic.

Half an hour of preparation that reminded Quistis more of the interrogation resistance class she had undergone rather than a beauty ritual finally culminated in Selphie declaring her 'perfect.' Zell, who had opted to stay and watch what he apparently perceived to be an extradoinarily hilarious spectacle judging by his noisy guffaws and gratuitous requests for a 'chick fight'-he would stay but not rescue her, the traitor-agreed.

Quistis herself was still not so sure. Irvine's appreciative reaction had bolstered her somewhat, but she still felt slightly out of place in the sort of impractical clothing her friends were always trying to get her to wear more often. There was no tactical advantage to a dress like this-although the stilettos were rather useful in a fight, she had to admit. She'd been wearing them during Rinoa's last birthday celebration at a popular local bar, and had found it necessary to use them to fend off a drunken, overly-amorous Zell and his slobbering advances. Whether he had actually been aiming for her was still somewhat up for debate considering his lack of depth perception and sense of direction at the time, but either way her shoes had come in remarkably handy.

She wondered for a moment if her mysterious internet lyricist could see her now; she'd been thinking of them when she hastily dabbed the slash of perfume she never wore across both wrists and the hollow of her throat, and remembering that, Quistis flushed a little.

He might be the cadet over there, the one dancing on one of the banquet tables with his pants off while one friend tried to coax him down and the rest snapped blackmail pictures with their phones.

He might be a she.

He might be Zell, playing a prank.

He was something else to think about, though, something that was not the blade-cut corpses of her students, scattered around her feet in floatsam pieces of truncated arms and hands and legs.

Something that was not Sate Rawson's second tongue, poking through his lips in a tissue-smeared line of red-gleaming steel.

She closed her eyes briefly. She was not thinking about that now. She _would not _think about that now, not with pixie dots of illumination turning Garden into a fantastical wonderland around her, not when there were no more shadows to chew through the eyes she shut tight against the horror movie sight of her ruined face.

Not while she was here, surrounded by her friends, by their laughter, and not alone in the well echo emptiness of her dorm room, the one crowded with the silent-staring ghosts of the men and women she had watched Seifer slaughter, the cadets she had dismembered and mutilated and murdered with her own hands.

The ones she did not understand where she had gone wrong with, which incorrect turn she had taken. Again.

Selphie and Zell dashed off arm-in-arm, and she let them go, setting her empty glass down on a nearby table. Self-consciously, she reached up to touch the dangling sliver of gold she'd threaded through the holes Rinoa and Selphie had bullied her into piercing, and as her hand came up, someone grabbed it, spinning her into a graceful dancer's twirl that slammed her up against a very hard chest.

* * *

><p>Predictably, he hated the uniform. It itched and rode up and suction-cupped to the seams of barely-held together wound disfiguring his back, and overall the whole thing was uncomfortable as all hell-he wanted to rip it off and strut around au naturale, which would certainly put Pubes' panties in a magnificent twist.<p>

But he looked like the fucking stud he remembered ruling Garden's halls in the mirror he tried it on in front of, and he wondered if Quistis noticed the way it clung to his ass like second skin.

It took him a full half hour to work up the balls to approach her.

She looked like some kind of goddamned fairy tale princess in the outfit Seifer knew she had not picked out for herself, the ones he used to dream about rescuing, and he knew by the poisonous glares the group of sluts eyeing him from their corner were starting to throw Quistis' way that he kept staring.

He wondered how obvious it was to everyone else in the room how head over fucking heels he had somehow fallen for his former instructor.

Probably pretty damn.

Except Quistis, of course, who wouldn't have noticed any male interest that did not involve homework questions if the poor son of a bitch slapped her across the face with his dick.

Which was probably not the best way to win her over, or to keep his dick exactly where he liked it, meaning still preferably attached to his body.

Seifer slammed a glass of champagne back like the pantsless douchebag dancing on the table a few feet from him, except this was his first and not the twelth or so that idiot was probably on. It tasted like ass, frankly, and he didn't know why anyone would want to actually ingest enough to go completely fucking nuclear the way that guy had. He was so annihilated he apparently didn't realize his dick was hanging half out of his pants-or maybe he did, and that was his-

Shit, yeah, he did. He was beginning to urinate obliviously into a potted plant tucked into the corner, a shot he made with impressive accuracy while his friends scattered frantically around him, probably not willing to be labeled an accomplice to the first authority figure that discovered him using the Ficus Messenger Girl had rescued from an in-town greenhouse as a public toilet.

Holy fucking Hyne he hated these people.

No wonder he had once been single-mindedly fixated on killing them all.

He watched Wuss and the cowboy's girlfriend walk off, leaving Quistis alone, and decided to finally sack up.

He made his approach into something swaggering, something like the over-confidence of the old Seifer Almasy, and as her hand came up to brush the triangle of shiny gold hanging from her ear, Seifer caught it and whirled Quistis smoothly into his arms.

The song blaring over the loudspeakers mounted at the forefront of the ballroom clicked over to something slow and annoying and shitty, and he recognized the first opening strains of the tune that had transformed Rinoa's mother from an unknown lounge pianist into someone people actually gave a shit about.

He hated this fucking song.

But Quistis had not yet had time to recover from the shock of his abrupt maneuver, so he shot his old smile down at her, the one he'd used on drunken Garden groupies who had not needed much more encouragement than that, the one he used to cover the terrified grip something sank into his heart like predator teeth, and he arranged her hands the way he'd been taught as a bored young cadet; one palm curved over the shoulder, the other wrapped around his. He slid his fingers through hers, over hers, and then he had his other hand on the arch of hip he hadn't stopped thinking about since that headrush moment of intimate contact in the hallway holding the first confirmation he'd ever gotten that he wasn't the piece of shit failure everyone seemed to consider him now.

She still had her mouth open in that 'o' of red-glossed what-the-hell-are-you-doing.

He thought about closing it-or opening it wider, maybe-in a way that would not be kind at all to certain parts of his anatomy, but he didn't.

Instead, he kept smiling down at her with the same jackass grin he'd flashed in that teeming corridor, and he stepped, and stepped again, forward and then to one side, pulling her closer than was technically standard in the dance he led her into.

She was warm. And soft. And-

He didn't really want to think too closely about how she felt pressed up against him like that. She was close enough to notice if parts of him started to really, really appreciate it.

Several couples away, Pubes and his princess were staring at each other like they couldn't see anything else-he'd happily poke one of Leonhart's eyes out if he really wanted the kind of impaired vision that would ruin the peripheral view he was ignoring anyway-and Seifer rolled his eyes. Those two made him want to fucking vomit. Probably just because they reminded him uncomfortably of the pansy-ass feelings he had somehow developed for this woman swaying in his arms, but still.

Just because he'd suddenly let Quistis use his dick as a door mat if she'd just give him one fleeting reconsideration didn't mean he had to tearily cream himself over the greatest love story of the current century, or whatever the hell the rag mags had deemed the fated wonder match that was Leonhart and his former girlfriend.

Quistis cleared her throat.

He realized he was probably staring a little too intensely down into her face, and-

Fuck it.

Seifer leaned down to set his cheek against hers, eliminating the last thin strip of space between them, his hand tightening on her hip. Pitching a tent in his new pants-something she should half-expect anyway, dressed as she was-was probably better than having her correctly interpret the pathetic puppy love any completely-blitzed idiot could probably spot from the other side of the room.

She was wearing perfume this time.

This close up, he could smell it, something laced with vanilla and the muskier underlayer of a scent he couldn't identify.

He could feel the little raised bump of the line of scar tissue that wasn't completely gone-_he could see fucking _bone _under the shredded gore of her mutilated face and oh Hyne fuck him what the hell was he supposed to do how did he not let her _die-

Seifer blinked.

Above him, ballroom chandelier light became pinwheel sparks of Curaga, and in their garish luminosity he could not tell if she was breathing, could not tell if she was _living_, and he had the dead meat lump of her hand wrapped in his, because stupid fucking jerk that he was-

He thought it mattered if he crouched there over her, chafing her cold, cold fingers and willing her not to die just because he needed her.

She turned her face suddenly into his chest; he could feel her lips through the material of his uniform, and for a moment his heart died.

"Selphie." Seifer heard her mutter, and he lifted his head long enough to get half-blinded by a red dot like a sniper's laser aimed directly at his eyeball.

"Son of a fucking-"

"Quisty!" the annoying little twit sing-songed, jiggling her camera noisily. "Smile!"

Seifer glared down at her. He was trying to have a fucking _moment _here, if she didn't mind.

"Quisty!"

His former instructor kept her face stubbornly buried in the folds of his SeeD uniform.

"_Quisty_!"

"Fuck off!" he snapped.

Selphie lowered her camera, malevolence tighting her wide green eyes down into narrow slits of utter, apocalyptic evil. He could see her ticking off all the different ways she could kill him from the mental list she was obviously composing as she stared him down, probably deciding none of them was creative enough.

"Ex_cuse _me?"

Quistis lifted her head with a long sigh. "Seifer, don't make her angry."

And suddenly, just like that, she was back to the Garden Festival Committee's too-cheerful leader, eerily jovial and obviously knee-deep-in-fucking-bat-shit crazy. She made him look completely normal and undisturbed by comparison.

"Please, Selphie-go film Squall and Rinoa or something."

"They're boring. Give him a kiss, Quisty. But grab his butt a little, ok? I want something good."

"What the hell? Are we shooting softcore porn?" he demanded. "Piss off, Messenger Girl."

"_Do it_!"

"Selphie." Quistis had her no-nonsense teacher's voice on now, the same tone she'd used on him more times than he could even pretend to care about. "Please go away."

"Nope." she chirped. "You're not leavin' this room tonight until you get some hot action, Quisty. As one of your best friends, it's my duty to make sure that you don't die an old, shriveled-up maid. It's him, or someone else. 'Cept that guy who peed on my poor little plant, 'cause ewww!"

"We are _not _making out on camera. I'm sure there are plenty of other couples who would be more than happy to indulge you."

"I'm not _interested _in other couples, Quisty. You're really tense all the time 'cause you never get any, you know? Irvy and I have sex all the time, and I'm always happy."

Quistis had her face in her hand now, the one that had been draped across his shoulder, and he missed its warmth.

"Get the hell out of here, or I'm going to snap that fucking thing and stick it so far up-"

"Seifer!"

"_What_?" he snarled.

"Selphie, just…look, if you'll just leave me in peace for tonight, I'll go on one of those blind dates you're always trying to set me up on."

Her little face peeked out from behind the camera, brightening. "Really?"

"Yes. I promise."

"Pinky swear?"

For shit's sake, was she in middle school?

"Fine; if that's what it takes."

So he was that fucking repulsive to her, was he? She'd rather let herself get bullied into a cluster fuck of a date with some beer-bellied creep who was too fat and ugly and socially unacceptable to get his own woman the normal way and if that was the way it was then fucking _fine_.

The nuclear core of his rage burned away his sanity, and swallowed Seifer's chest whole.

"For _fuck's _sake." he snapped, and then he had her face between his hands, between the arcs and ridges of nerveless scar tissue that made up his palms, and their lips brushed and touched and finally sealed, and his world burned out from beneath his feet.

This was why Leonhart was such a goddamned pussy. This fan of soft breath and softer mouth and pounding drumbeat concerto, tap dancing out a whole fucking orchestra inside his chest.

Somehow, her hands ended up on the lapels of his uniform. They were probably trying to push him away, but he couldn't tell for sure, and now he had both arms around her waist, and he made himself forget about the voyeuristic little freak watching them because he was milking this fucking moment for all it was worth-

Quistis yanked violently out of his hands.

* * *

><p>He was very, very good at what he did.<p>

Not that she had much experience kissing men-just a few random suitors here and there, some decently skilled, some…not so much, and a very wet, very sloppy attempt at one by an extremely drunk Zell.

Seifer very clearly knew what he was doing.

Most of her was horrified, but a very small, primitively instinctual part of Quistis demanded she go with it, sink into it, let herself pretend it was the kind of pyrotechnics swirl of planet-changing moment Squall and Rinoa passed back and forth between them like the fairytale looks they exchanged when they thought no one was looking. She deserved a moment like that, didn't she? She deserved something all-consuming, something that was not her paperwork or her job or her perfectly tidy, perfectly organized dorm room, didn't she?

This was not it.

This was nice enough, passionate enough-on his end, at least-but it did not recede anything that was not his lips or his arms into the unimportant background blur of things that did not matter anymore, and it did not make her knees go slack-jawed weak the way she was pretty sure Rinoa's did.

This was _Seifer _for Hyne's sake-what did she expect?

She came up sputtering. "What are you doing?"

His eyes fluttered drunkenly, his lips damp. He seemed, for one of the first times she could ever remember, at a loss for words.

"Encore, encore!" Selphie cheered. "But this time, pull her hair a little bit, ok? I want something really, _really _good, this time-'member Seifer, Quisty's fun place-"

"_Selphie_!"

"-is this dried-up old dinosaur that hasn't been used in like eight thousand years. So she needs someone to really give it to her."

Quistis yanked herself forcibly from his arms and dragged a hand across her mouth.

* * *

><p>She <em>wiped her fucking mouth<em>.

She wiped her fucking mouth, and the part of Seifer that had expected nothing less but had hoped, had _prayed _for a different outcome coiled and shriveled and died.

He was that disgusting, that _revolting _to her, and it made him want to throw up.

He did not. Instead, he let disdainful sneer creep over his lips, let rage and exasperation throw up their shields inside his eyes, and he leaned away with his arms crossed the way hers were now.

The little twist still filming them switched her camera from Quistis back to him, and Seifer brought his hand up to cover the lens. He gave a push meant to discourage her, just enough to arc the angle of her camera out and away from them, but he'd misjudged the adrenaline humiliated fury pushed through his veins and his tight-coiled muscles, and she went flying instead.

Her camera landed in separate pieces around her, and Irvine was there in an instant, crouching beside a bewildered, blinking Selphie with his hat shifted back so he could look directly up into Seifer's eyes. "What the hell's goin' on here?"

He'd let Leonhart bend him over his desk before he let these assholes drag an apology out of him. Seifer gave Irvine his glare back, drilling it with every ounce of substantial force he could pull up from that nuclear core inside his chest into the idiot's too-pretty eyes.

"Your freak of a girlfriend is bothering me."

Quistis eased herself between them, and Seifer cleared her from his path with an almost casual side brush of his hand, nudging her off to one side.

When Irvine straightened to full height, he was almost as tall as Seifer.

Almost, but not quite, and he knew this prick didn't have it in him to follow through on the threat he let shine through the long sweeps of his dark eyelashes.

"You need t' apologize."

"You need to date someone who isn't just good at sucking cock; trust me, eventually the novelty wears off when you realize you have to listen to them talk."

Irvine swung.

Seifer blocked, lowered his shoulder into a tackle that flipped Irvine over backwards, and then they were among the scattered rubble pieces of black plastic casing and shattered glass splinters that were all that remained of her camera, grunting and punching and kicking while somewhere from behind him, Quistis demanded they stop.

He would not have guessed the cowboy could fight like this; he'd always struck Seifer more as one of those pansies who loudly exclaimed they were a lover and not a fighter to hide the fact that really all they were was a pants-wetting little coward, but Irvine brawled like an animal, savage and viper-quick and pitiless, getting an elbow in here, a knee there-

Maybe it was because he fought for the honor of that little freak Seifer could not even remotely see the appeal of.

He pinned Irvine down with his forearm, his hair streaming out and unfettered across the littered ballroom floor, his hat gone now; Kinneas got a hand around his throat and Seifer pressed and pressed and fucking _pressed_, trying to drive his arm right down through the line of straining white throat tendons trying to figure out how to breathe around this new obstacle. He watched the room liquid ripple around him as the cowboy's fingers tightened, and then suddenly Pubes was there to save the goddamned day, and Wuss, piling in behind him, yanking at his arms, hauling him out of the straddle his legs had gone into on either side of Irvine's chest.

Quistis was back between them again.

"_Stop _it, both of you."

"Dincht, let me go!"

It was interesting to watch the laid-back cowboy completely blow his cool like this; Seifer filed the moment away in his brain, something he could savor the next time that prissy little pretty boy face failed to even twitch at his latest barb.

Zell was not enough to hold the six foot sharpshooter back, and he twisted free, lunging again.

Seifer jerked out of Leonhart's crushing grip with a nimble sidestep and torque of his arms, and leapt to meet him.

The last thing he saw was Quistis Trepe's fist hurtling toward his face at a speed approximately equal to that of traveling light, and then he was on his back, blinking up at the indistinct smudge of chandelier light above him.

Across from him, Irvine landed on his knees, clutching his nose.

Her voice went as arctic as Shiva, as Trabia, and Seifer wondered whether he wasn't leaving this ballroom manually neutered after all.

"Another step by either one of you, and I'm putting these shoes into places that will require surgical removal of them. Do you understand?"

It was very, very wrong that a part of him was turned on by the cold authority in her voice.

Irvine made a noise that did not sound like acquiescence.

Seifer struggled up to one elbow, the teary blur of his smashed right eye glowering as effectively as it could, which was probably not all that impressive, considering.

"Irvine? Seifer?"

Someone dragged him back to his feet.

"I'd like to file a complaint about some injuries a _teacher _just inflicted on me." Seifer responded, giving Quistis the ugliest look he could manage from his one good eye. "Isn't that grounds for license suspension?"

"I'll let her give you a matching black eye, if you don't shut up." Leonhart mumbled behind him.

Quistis stared him down imperiously, not saying anything.

He looked away finally with a scowl, and she turned to Squall. "I'd like to put in a formal request that Seifer Almasy have his SeeD status temporarily suspended while appropriate disciplinary actions are carried out."

Wonderful. SeeD for five fucking minutes, and he'd already screwed it up. They could all kiss his ass, the fantastic fucking six and all the cockknockers quietly staring and pointing at him as the ball came to a grinding halt around the little drama they played out for an audience of two hundred.

It was not the entire world at least, watching his fall again, reveling in it, cheering the arterial spray of blood and the arc of thudding tumble his mother's head rolled into.

He let Squall and Zell march him away without another word.

**A/N: So the SeeD exam was not originally intended to be so bloody, and I blame that scene on my sister. The night I wrote it, she sent me a horrible, horrible slash fic she wrote about Seifer and Squall as a joke, and nasty, nasty mayhem was the only way to purge it from my mind. And yes, if anyone is wondering, I had to get a crack at Twilight in there. Sorry to any of my readers who like the series, but I thought it was only good for that this-is-stupid-but-in-a-kind-of-entertaining-way read, until Breaking Dawn, which should be slowly tortured to death. Thanks as always to my reviewers. Hope you guys are all still enjoying this!**


	9. Chapter 7

**A/N: Well, response to this story so far has been pretty lukewarm (review quantity, not quality,) so I hope you all are still enjoying this. This story has gotten way out of hand-I have the next three chapters written already; in total, this story is already a little over 100,000 words. I've only been working on this for a little over a month. That's nuts. At first I felt a bit guilty about abandoning my original fiction to devote all my time to this, but since I no longer have the intention of trying to publish any of my work, I guess it doesn't matter. Fanfiction just isn't ready to give up on me yet.**

**Chapter Seven**

Presidential Palace

Esthar

Another group of protesters had gathered outside.

Ellone watched them wave signs and thrust fists and chant mob-echoed slogans that dripped hate, and turned away from the window with a sigh.

Quistis looked up from the magazine she flipped through with a sympathetic smile.

Over her head, Laguna's Chocobo clock smashed its foot into the notch indicating the hour had just clicked over to 1:00, and Quistis jumped.

Ellone smothered a laugh behind her hand. "I'm sorry. That thing is awful."

"Squall tried giving me something similar last year-it was an alarm clock with a little spring-loaded Grat that popped out and actually hit you in the face as a wake-up call. Zell gave it to him for a birthday present, and for some reason he thought he could pass it off to me."

"Zell's such a character."

"Mmm-yes. 'Character' is one thing we call him." Quistis shut her magazine and adjusted her glasses. "How long has this been going on?" She indicated the crowd out the window.

Ellone did not look at them again; each little flicker of glance she threw their way piled another stone onto the cairn of arctic boulder weight she slowly built inside her gut, and she did not need one more reminder that while Laguna slowly battled his way back to a full recovery, around him his country gradually peeled back the layers of its civility to reveal the ugly underbelly of human nature beneath.

_Impeach President Loire. Kill the Bitch. SeeD Is Useless. _She had burned each and every sign into her mind, and at night when she was trying to sleep, her mind flipped back through them all in a slideshow flurry of waking nightmare.

She wondered if Quistis-bossy, maternal little Quisty trying too hard to take care of them all-grown-up Quistis with the sharply observant eyes behind those glasses, could read everything that passed across her face.

Probably.

"The one down there now has been here since 8:00. They've been showing up pretty regularly over the past several days. We had to send some of the cleaning ladies out to scrub graffiti off the walls of the Palace a few days ago; it's…" She trailed off as someone knocked at the door of Laguna's office. "Yes?"

Derran popped his head inside the door, and the smile that pulled at her mouth was genuine now, and not the pasted-on lie she had spent most of the last hour wearing. "Oh…" His pause was awkward. "Didn't realize you had a visitor. I was looking for President Loire."

"He's taking a nap right now. He still gets tired easily."

"Right."

Quistis had turned around in her seat to offer him a greeting smile, and he flushed all the way to the curve of hair dangling across his forehead. "Uh…just needed to grab some paperwork real quick."

Both women watched him tuck a sheaf of papers under his arm and scurry hurriedly out of the room, and Quistis turned back to Ellone with an amused eyebrow arch that softened her whole face. She was the warrior and not the woman too often now, and Ellone enjoyed the reminder of the blue-eyed little girl who'd let 'Sis' braid her hair. She'd primped and preened and pursed those little lips in the mirror Matron had given her when Ellone was done, and then Seifer, brash, noisy little Seifer had run in and called her ugly, and in Quistis' rush to get a fist in his eye, she'd dropped the mirror between them and shattered it to pieces.

This, of course, had somehow been Seifer's fault, and it had taken Ellone several minutes to effectively break up the hair-pulling, face-scratching scuffle that broke out between them.

Seifer.

She had not seen him in years, not for more than the split second of the glimpse she occasionally caught of him in Garden's halls, anyway. He had grown up very tall, very handsome, and very unruly, just as she'd always known he would.

She was glad that when they cut Matron's pretty, tear-streaked face from her body, his had not followed a moment later.

"Ellone?" Quistis prompted.

"Hmm?" She pulled her chin up out of her hand. "Sorry. Did you ask me something?"

"It wasn't important." Quistis pushed her glasses back up her nose again. "What were you thinking about?"

"Seifer Almasy, actually. Just that I haven't seen him in a long time. The rest of you all stop by to visit sometimes, but I never see him. Well, him and Squall. But at least I can go to Garden and see Squall. Seifer never seems to be around when I visit."

Quistis' mouth thinned.

"You're still fighting with him, aren't you? You guys were always kind of friends, mostly enemies when you were kids. He was annoying, huh?"

"He still is."

Ellone laughed. "He grew up pretty, though, right?" She winked.

"Yes, but he ruins it as soon as he opens his mouth."

"How is he doing? I mean…after. I was there. For her execution. It was so hard to watch that, but Seifer-"

Seifer had gone down under the weight of three men, screaming and weeping. It was not at all like the little boy she'd known, the one who balled all his emotions up in the knot of fist that was his answer to everything that disappointed him. Judging by the reactions of those who knew him, it was not at all like the man either, and when she'd moved in to take his head between her hands, cradling it in the hollow of her throat, he'd just hung there, sagged there, smearing tears down her neck.

"I'd rather not talk about Seifer right now. There was an…incident last week."

It was probably not polite too probe, especially considering the look on Quistis' face, but curiosity got the better of her and she asked anyway. "What?"

Quistis sighed and looked away. "He made SeeD, finally. And then he ruined both it and the SeeD ball by getting into a fight with Irvine that got his SeeD status temporarily suspended."

"That's surprising. Irvine is usually pretty level-headed."

"Yes, well, Seifer has the mind bending ability to reduce any rational human being to a rabid animal. And the fact that he kissed me, and then threw a temper tantrum afterward that resulted in Selphie's camera getting broken probably didn't help matters any."

"Really?" She perked up, folding her hands in front of her. "Seifer kissed you? I didn't realize the two of you were together."

Quistis looked horrified. "We _aren't_. It's a little bit of a long story, but the gist of it is that Selphie has this obsession with attaching me to anything with a y chromosome, and Seifer did it to get her to finally leave us alone. He got angry afterward-I suppose because I didn't swoon in his arms the way all women are apparently supposed to-pushed Selphie, and then Irvine got involved. It was…ugly."

"Hmm." She shifted a stack of paperwork to one side so she could get her whole elbow on the desk, narrowing both eyes thoughtfully. "Maybe he was mad because he likes you and he was disappointed by how you reacted."

"That's…highly unlikely. Seifer likes himself. That's about it."

"He used to like you, you know. When you were kids. Or, at least, I always thought he did-he was always pulling your hair, stealing your toys, all the things little boys do when they want attention from a cute girl." She smiled. "Anyway, I know you're dying to change the subject; how are things at Garden? How is Squall?"

"I wouldn't really know; he spends most of his time locked up in his office. As for Garden, we've had several…issues lately, but we're working on getting everything resolved. To be honest, I'd really rather not talk about work right now." She crossed her legs and laced her hands across one knee. "The vice president is a bit of an odd choice for a politician, but then I suppose Laguna is too. He's cute, though." Something mischievous threw sparks in her warm blue eyes, and Ellone felt herself flush.

Quistis laughed. "I'm assuming you've noticed."

"I might have a little crush on him. It's just harmless, though-I'm basically Laguna's secretary. Vice presidents get involved with important people, not country girls who walk around with their skirts tucked up in the back of their underwear." Quistis' eyes went wide and Ellone laughed self-deprecatingly. "Yes, I did-at an important meeting with an ambassador from Galbadia, at that. No one bothered to tell me until after it was over."

She glanced up to check the clock. "Laguna will probably sleep for another couple of hours or so; want to go shopping? I need some new shoes-well, not need really, but I saw this pair of adorable little sandals in Marge's down the street, and they'd go perfectly with this skirt I bought the other day."

"You don't have to explain yourself; I'm friends with Rinoa Heartilly." She pushed her chair back. "I could use a break from admission forms and worrying about…everything, actually, although I have to warn you, Selphie says shopping with me is like pulling T-Rexaur teeth."

"That's ok." Ellone said brightly, finding her purse somewhere in the disorganized mess that was Laguna's desk and yanking it free. A mountain avalanche of paperwork teetered, shifted, and suddenly came surging down, straight into Quistis' arms, who caught it deftly and neatly shuffled everything together before placing it all back down in a tidy pile.

She smiled. "I've had some practice at this."

* * *

><p>He was supposed to be shelving books from the dusty cart sitting in front of him, just one more step in the procession of increasingly menial tasks Squall kept finding for him to do as penance for messing up Irvine's faggy little face.<p>

What he was really doing was flipping through one of the titty magazines someone had tucked unobtrusively between a copy of the SeeD manual and some hideously boring textbook on the merits of GF junctioning.

The suicidal thoughts he'd ducked after Balamb had freed him but murdered his mother kept finding him now, as he scrubbed pots under the watchful eye of some nasty cow of a lunch lady, as he scoured men's bathroom walls soaked in urine and graffiti and other things he didn't really want to think about, as he worked his way through Garden's entire garage, washing and polishing and waxing-

And on and on and on. He was pretty sure his next rung down on the ladder taking him through each progressively worse circle of hell was stepping in to jerk Wuss off when his hand got tired.

He really would kill himself if it came down to that.

Thinking about Zell, Seifer frowned and shut his magazine, throwing it down on the cart. He didn't really get the appeal of gigantically disproportionate breasts, anyway. Tits were tits, sure, but when the woman could rest the things on her fucking knees, he had a problem with that. Boobs weren't supposed to look like that until the woman was fucking ninety or something.

The bitter-faced old hag who ran the library glared at him; Seifer smiled and waved without his whole hand, and she picked up a nearby phone, most likely to alert Leonhart to the fact that Seifer was an uncooperative little shit who obviously could not be disciplined enough.

That wouldn't be anything new to Pubes.

He gave the cart a nudge with his foot, walking it along like that until he rounded the curve of shelf he sauntered along, taking the whole thing out of sight and into a dark corner where two cadets were trying to eat one another's faces off.

"Hey!" Seifer selected a book at random, and threw it at them. "Get the fuck out of here."

The guy had his pants unbuckled and when he scrambled to his feet, they fell; either they had been at it for a while already, or this was the first time something that was not his own desperate little hand had touched his penis-he had all four inches flying at full mast, and Seifer aimed another book as accurately as he could without actually looking at it.

"Ow, shit!"

The girl leapt to her feet, keeping one hand on the hunched-over back of her retching boyfriend, the kiln flare of rage in her eyes throwing Seifer off balance for a moment. People generally just shit themselves and ran away when the alternative was confronting him, but she stood her ground the same way seven-year-old Quistis Trepe had, staring him down over the mutilated remains of the toy horse he'd just smashed. "Knock it off, you jerk!"

"Take Mr. Wee Peen there and get the fuck out of here." he snapped again, crossing his arms and glowering down at her with his best I'm-fucking-bug-nuts-so-get-your-ass-out-of-my-way-or-I'll-eat-your-eyeballs look, which apparently had not lost its edge because all her bravado suddenly vanished, and she hastily helped her boyfriend dress himself while he assisted the process along by moaning pathetically and clutching himself. This was his fucking spot, goddammit-not that he really planned to use it for anything spectacular, but these horny assholes were encroaching on his territory, and he didn't want anyone watching him trying not to daydream about Quistis, which was how he'd spent most of his purgatory.

Quistis, who hadn't spoken to-hadn't even _looked _at him-for an entire week. Neither had Zell; there went the burgeoning kind of friendship he hadn't even wanted anyway.

The two cadets fled; he wondered if the guy had managed to get everything tucked away before he limped off, smiling to himself as he thought about the look that particular spectacle would put on that ancient crone's shriveled up face. She was probably the devil reincarnate, though, so she must have seen a lot worse in her day.

"Instructor Trepe's in Esthar today; she won't even be here. Just do it, goddammit! Fuck, ok; breathe. You won't get caught. You got me? You're not going to get caught."

Seifer paused, leaning his hip up against the bookcase he'd stopped next to, the frown his forehead rippled into puckering the striate line of deformity Lionheart had left behind. What the hell was this? He peeked very carefully around the corner of his hiding place, and could just barely spot a dark head with a cell phone plastered to one ear, turned away from him.

"I don't know; you're the one standing there. Just grab something sexy."

Seifer felt his eyes tighten.

"She's _got _sexy underwear-you probably just have to dig for them."

Oh for fuck's sake-attack of the Trepies.

He surged out of his hiding place like he had Hyperion in one hand, making it into an attack that brought one palm up into an arc of spear jab that he twisted benignly at the last moment, so that it seized the idiot by the collar instead of going through his throat. He was a good half foot shorter than Seifer; he hefted the jerk up by the lapels of his uniform so they could stare eye to eye, and now he could feel that feral battle grin back on his face, showing terrified pervert gaze the gleaming white of as many teeth as he could fit into it.

"Tell your friend to put the goddamned underwear down."

Stuttering, the guy did as he ordered.

"Now go watch some fucking internet porn, you loser." Seifer told him, setting the creep back down on his feet in time for the librarian to spot him doing so.

"Mr. Almasy!" she barked.

He swept her a mocking bow.

Her displeasure twisted her face into something vaguely resembling a prune-which actually wasn't all that different from the way it normally looked, so for all he knew maybe she wasn't mad at all, but had just taken a shit in her diaper.

He didn't think asking which it was would go over very well, though.

"Commander Leonhard entrusted you into my care to re-stock shelves, _not _to scare off hard-working young men and women who are actually putting good use to their free time by studying." The implication being that he was an irresponsible dick who must have fucked the entire board or something to actually pass his SeeD exam.

He wondered what the old bitch would look like with her head on fire; too bad he had never really bothered to hone his casting skills. Aim that precise was beyond his reach-he'd probably just end up torching the whole library.

The entrance to the library opened suddenly, and in the semicircle sweep of fluttering door, Seifer could see the spiked blonde of Dincht's unruly head, and next to him, the lanky outline of pony-tailed cowboy-his pretty little girl perfection marred now with an arch of white across the bridge of his nose where Quistis had broken it.

She'd been sorry about that, but for the black eye that people had probably talked about behind his back for weeks, Seifer got nothing.

Maybe he had to look like a girl to get in her good graces. Pubes' face had always suggested 'raging homosexual' to him, so he supposed she must be into that soft-faced feminine thing that seemed to be relatively popular with women nowadays.

Personally, he hoped Kinneas' nose healed crookedly.

"So, some guy's sending Quisty poetry-you know that?"

"No; how do you? Did she tell you that?"

"Ah-well, no. See, I had Selphie hack into her e-mail for me-"

"Dude, why'd you do that? She'll break your nose again if she finds out about that."

"I took these pictures for Selph, right? An' then I e-mailed them to her-only I sent 'em to Quisty instead, and these pictures were of a, you know, _sensitive nature_. So I figured we'd go in there and get 'em while she was gone before she ever even noticed 'em."

"And you looked through all her other e-mails while you were in there?"

"Dincht, don't play all self-righteous saint with me-you're the one who tried to spy on her while she was in the shower that one time."

"That was an _accident_. I didn't realize she was naked."

"Sure; understandable. You heard the running water and figured she was in there knitting. Happened to me once before, too."

"Ok, fine-I was curious. Quisty's got nice boobs, if you were wondering."

"Well, since I ain't a perv like you, no I wasn't. Well, I dunno-maybe a little. Anyway, it's not like I went through all her e-mails. One of 'em jest sorta' caught my eye and I opened it. Somethin' about a chick's family killin' her because she liked a poor guy or somethin,' then they buried her in this tomb by the sea but he still kept loving her. There were a couple more from the same person, too."

"Quisty's got lots of secret admirers."

"I know; I just sorta' thought she'd mention this one to one of us. It seems like the sorta' thing she'd be into-she says usually the Trepies just send her really shitty poems or marriage proposals or something, not write whole sonnets. It was pretty decent stuff, too."

"So who do you think it is?"

Irvine shrugged. "Dunno. Someone from Garden."

Zell caught his eye as the conversation slowly petered out, and kept walking like he hadn't even seen Seifer.

Little fuckwit.

He scowled and turned back to his cart, picking up his magazine again.

* * *

><p>Through the polished curve of storefront window glass, Quistis could see the ragged gray fringe of pregnant cloud cover, leaking the first droplets of pounding rainstorm that strained its seams.<p>

The white-gold veins of distant lightning underscored its titanic belly.

It was all very similar to the way she felt right now. She watched Ellone pull out another dress with a bland smile, checking her watch for the second time in fifteen minutes. It was nice sharing this rare moment of girlish frivolity with the woman she'd viewed as a sort of awe-inspiring role model growing up, but did it have to be quite so…frivolous? She couldn't believe people actually paid so much for mere clothing. Weapons, vehicle repairs-these were all understandably costly items, but they were also useful and not simply decorative. Quistis' Garden-issue black and gold-trimmed pants and unadorned black T-shirt were perfectly serviceable, and they had not cost seven hundred gil the way the dress Ellone was currently considering did. Of course, they did not show off her training-sculpted calves the way Selphie's dress had, but it wasn't like she had anyone to flaunt them for.

Except Seifer, perhaps.

The innocuous comment Ellone had made in Laguna's office kept coming back to her, kept haunting her, random fragmentary pieces of it pricking her brain with a splinter here, a sliver there while she tried to drown it beneath the ocean tide of her insistent denial.

_"Maybe he was mad because he likes you-" _

The only thing that could be worse than that possibility was if her secretive internet suitor turned out to be him. That at least was not possible-she wasn't entirely sure Seifer bothered to ever read anything that didn't include pictures of half-naked women. She had certainly never witnessed him crack even a single textbook during his many years at Garden.

Just because he was the first man to kiss her in-

Well, longer than she liked to admit. Longer, even, than she could really remember, which meant either it had been far too long, or the last one had been so utterly unremarkable her mind had just completely wiped him clean of her memory banks.

Seifer at least had been memorable, if not entirely pleasant; he'd be pleased he'd left an impression.

Well-she didn't want to lie to herself; the kiss itself had been just fine-more than just fine, really, because his lips had been soft and knowledgeable and so cleverly insistent that even though she didn't even like the man-

Hyne. Quistis pressed both hands to the cheeks she could feel burning like that underside of lightning-tongued cloud bank, and snuck an embarrassed look at a sales associate hovering nearby, like the woman could somehow read her mind.

It was not a kiss that had burned away the veil between fantasy and reality, smearing the two together into the blurred watercolor fusion of real world and fairytale that comprised Squall and Rinoa's relationship, but it had kept her up later than she would like to admit that night.

Or maybe it was just the fantasies of pulling his head off with her whip that kept her awake, and the kiss was a mere by-product of playing the whole scenario out in her head again.

It wasn't the first time he'd kissed her, Quistis recalled now with her chin in one hand. During a fairly routine rescue mission from Selphie the Dragon-who had spent most of the time disinterestedly pulling apart Matron's phone while Seifer yelled at her to chase him-Quistis had somehow become poisoned with something to which the only antidote was a knight's kiss, which had not made much sense to her even back then. She could remember lying there sneakily blinking eyes that were supposed to be shut tight, emaciated curls of blue sky leaking through in off and on introductions of color into the monotone landscape behind her eyelids, thinking he would not actually do it. Seifer, however, took his knightly duties seriously, and when something cold and moist and overeager struck her lips, she sat up with a scream.

Unlike the man he had grown into, boy Seifer had not known anything about kissing, but he had sneaked enough parentally-banned programs from the television Matron occasionally let them watch to know that adults put their tongues in one another's mouths when they kissed.

She had nearly bitten it off.

She wondered if he remembered that; it made an interesting parrallel to the brief embrace they'd shared years later-she'd punched him in the eye while he stood there holding his stick sword and looking confused, and then Selphie the Dragon suddenly remembered she was supposed to be a fearsome monster guarding her prey against liberation, and bit Seifer on the leg.

His six-year-old vocal cords had not been quite so developed as they were now, and he'd screamed like a girl.

She smiled and then caught herself, pulling her chin out of her hand. She would not allow recollections of a long ago childhood, a long ago boy who did not exist anymore, dull her anger at him. The only positive to emerge from the scene he'd created at the SeeD ball had been that there was now no tangible proof of their kiss other than Selphie's exaggerated claims, which Quistis hoped no one would believe anyway.

Ellone had made her way to the register during her reverie, and Quistis stood, smoothing out her pants.

"Shoot-looks like it's going to rain." the older woman commented as she turned away with her newly-bagged purchase in her hand, frowning at the boiling sky they both watched with growing dismay from the window.

Quistis had brought along her magazine in anticipation of her boredom, though it had lain mostly untouched across her lap while she contemplated the differences between kissing six-year-old Seifer and twenty-one-year-old Seifer, and she flipped it open now as they stepped outside, making a little tent over her head with it.

They dashed for a corner street café as livid steel storm front broke open above them, and began to pour in earnest.

The wisps of gunmetal vapor reminded her of the smoked blur of Hyperion, spinning complex in and out reptile strikes of screaming death all around her.

She pulled her eyes back down to the quiet pastry shop Ellone pushed her way inside ahead of her, its bell tinkling their arrival to the small patronage sitting around drinking coffee and chatting. They glanced up without interest and then returned to their conversations, and Quistis tossed her soaked, ruined magazine into the trash can just inside the entry way.

Ellone made her way to the counter to buy them both lattes-black, no cream or sugar or flavoring for her, Quistis called out-and she selected a quaint window-facing table of white-painted whicker for them.

She watched them sprint up roadway streaked in tiger stripes of soggy obsidian, the rain turning everything from characteristic gray and banded yellow to featureless black.

They protected their heads with the signs and banners they had thrust and rattled outside the Palace, and Quistis went cold inside.

They were making a beeline for the café.

"Ellone-"

Too late-the first of them had already begun to trickle inside, laughing and shaking water from waterlogged hair and paper, calling back friendly jeers to those still standing out in the storm, and the bleak well hole of bad feeling inside her tunneled deeper.

They had carefully skirted the protesters when they left, taking a quiet back exit onto the street that would not put them in the midst of the angry crowd, and now here she was, staring directly at them with a face that would be immediately recognizeable to anyone with a vicious anti-sorceress agenda.

She had Save the Queen clipped to her belt-there were few places she went without it-and Quistis touched it now, as the first pair of eyes landed on her and their owner noticeably stiffened.

"Hey, that's-"

"Quistis Trepe." someone blurted out behind him, and out of the corner of one eye, she could see Ellone turn away from the counter with her hands full of coffee, her clothing store purchase swinging from one wrist, eyes wide.

Quistis stood, and carefully insinuated herself between her unarmed friend and the mob now completely blocking the only exit. She wondered if the rather cliché 'we don't want any trouble' would work to diffuse a situation such as this.

Probably not judging by the looks on their face, identical masks of raw hatred, all laser-focused on her.

"Get the hell out of here." one of them snapped. "We're not sharing the same building as you fucking SeeD trash."

Seifer or even Zell would have taken that as a challenge, swelling up like agitated Ruby Dragon, chest-puffed and pulling fire in prepatory ribbons of killing flame up from the cavern of its gut. They would have waded into the midst of it all, kicking and punching and biting, until they went down in a surge of the overwhelming numbers they could not defeat-

She did not. Her pride was not testosterone-fueled, and Quistis knew she could not fight her way through all of them and still keep Ellone safe. "That's fine; we're leaving. Ellone, come on." She held out a hand to her friend without taking her eyes off them, and when she felt the shoulder-hunched young woman bump up against her, Quistis gripped her gently but firmly by the elbow.

"No." someone else hissed. "I lost both my parents in the first Sorceress War, and it's people like her that let that happen. I don't think she should just get to leave."

The shop's other patrons watched tensely.

"We're leaving." Quistis told them soothingly. "Let's not cause any problems. There's no need for this to get ugly."

They did not need seem to even notice the weapon strapped to her hip, or else they simply did not care, and when she took a tentative step forward, that was the only match they needed to re-light the fusion torch of their simmering revulsion, and one of them lunged out to meet her.

Ellone screamed.

Quistis went down beneath the unstoppable breaker of them, relentless as the wave Seifer had not been able to save her from.

She hit as she rolled, coming back to her feet with Save the Queen uncoiled in her hand, and where it whistled out in a long arc of lightning crack leather, cheek skin peeled apart around bloody bone.

Strong arms snaked around her from behind, and Quistis used him as the fulcrum for her pivot, swinging both legs up at a diagonol that opened jutting chin point around the heel of her boot.

She hoped she didn't have to kill any of them; Ellone screamed again and she craned her neck to look, forcing her chin down to her chest so her attacker could not get an arm around her neck, and when she saw that two men twice her friend's size had her backed up against the countertop, her dropped coffee splattering her new shoes in puddles of sizzling damage, Quistis amended that thought.

She hoped she didn't have to kill any of them if they did not hurt Ellone, which did not seem likely judging by the higher pitch her shrieks had just climbed to.

Quistis slammed her elbow backward, clipping solar plexus, and when the sweaty brute holding her loosened up, she dropped to both feet and trapped his wrist in the basic attack grab they had all learned during their first unarmed combat class, using her hips as the hinge that draped him across her back and partially over one shoulder. A quick thrust of those hips flipped him over her shoulder, landing him like a highway car crash, the entire floor shaking beneath him, and then she let the arc of the leap she went into carry her onto the back of the man nearest Ellone, Save the Queen wrapping his throat like tendrils of barbed lover's hair.

"Back away. Now." she demanded, and he did so slowly, retching in the folds of whip coil she kept tight against his windpipe.

Ellone cowered back against the countertop, and then sprang forward with something in her hand.

The man standing in front of her screamed and whipped his head away, and Quistis watched grains of leftover salt drain from between her friend's fingers. She let her victim go with a shove that pushed him back into the surging crowd, taking several down with him, and then she pulled Firaga up from the storage of magic whispering lines of static hum like storm cloud electricity through her veins, and let it built in two separate tongues of red-orange glare in either hand.

With a push that felt like it shredded her arteries, Quistis blew out the front window.

She had Ellone by one hand before they could even get out of the screaming huddles they had gone into, Save the Queen dangling from the other, and she pushed Laguna's niece ahead of her, using the pretty little table she had selected earlier as a stepping stone that took her over their heads and to the ledge of saw-toothed window frame she had destroyed.

The rain blasted her like shrapnel.

Ellone paused in the middle of the street, waiting for her, her dark hair fluttering in the window, in the slashes of rain like gunblade downswings, and when she took the step forward that would bring her down and onto the sidewalk outside, Quistis stumbled and almost fell.

She clutched her left arm as pain like out-of-control bonfire flashed inside it, and brought her fingers away bright crimson and damp.

She had torn something inside herself when she cast after all.

She didn't have time to stop; Quistis hit the pavement at a dead run, collecting Ellone on her way up the street back toward the Palace, fighting the blood loss dizziness of threatened collapse chewing away at her legs.

* * *

><p>"Tsk tsk tsk tsk."<p>

Quistis sighed and held still under Dr. Kadowaki's careful ministrations, holding back the wince her brow kept wanting to go into as Garden's physician wrapped her arm.

"You should have gotten attention for this earlier."

"I managed to stop most of the bleeding on my own; Laguna had enough to worry about without knowing about it." Esthar's president was notoriously prone to overreactions when it came to any of Squall's friends, all of whom he'd extended his fatherly affections to within about five minutes or so of meeting them. Zell in particular, who shared Laguna's enthusiastic love for candy bars and cheesy joke gifts. (They had bought Quistis a candle shaped like a piece of dog excrement for her last birthday and collapsed into mutual hysterics when she pulled it out of the penis-shaped box Zell had wrapped it in, which did not bode well for the assumption that one day Laguna might actually act like a middle-aged politician and not a playful five-year-old.)

The playful five-year-old was much preferable to the uncharacteristically quiet ghost that was all that was left of him, however. Ellone had explained to her that slumps of Squall-induced depression were not uncommon, but they generally did not last this long, and Quistis had not needed to use any of the body language skills she had learned during her interrogation course to interpret the worry on her friend's pretty young face.

She would have to see about getting Squall down there somehow, soon.

"You'll need to stop casting for a while, give this time to heal. No more stocking for a while, either."

Quistis did not argue with the woman-who might hit her over the head if she attempted to-but she certainly had no intention of depriving herself of anything that might give her even the slightest edge in an increasingly hostile world. If her ruined shopping trip with Ellone was any indication, she would need it.

"All done. How do you feel?"

"Tired." she answered honestly.

"Then go to bed."

"I would like to-but I've got a lot of work to catch up on since I've been gone half the day,and-"

"Quistis Trepe, you march your little butt straight out of here and to your room. You need to rest."

"I'll rest tonight, when I have time to do so."

Kadowaki turned away and picked up her phone. "Seifer Almasy, please report to the infirmary." she said into it, and then hung up with a satisfied little smack that echoed dully in Quistis' ears.

"What did you do that for?"

"I called someone who will make sure you get where you need to go, even if he has to throw you over his shoulder to get you there. He's a big strong boy and you're still weak from blood loss, so if I were you, I'd just cooperate if you don't want to wind up making an embarrassing spectacle of yourself."

To Quistis' surprise, he showed up within just a few minutes, which meant Squall had likely saddled him with another unenduringly boring task he had been eager to escape. Seifer frowned when his eyes flickered over to Quistis sitting on the main exam table and noticed her bandaged arm, and he crossed both arms over his chest. He was not wearing his trench coat today, and beneath the short sleeved shirt he'd donned that morning, his biceps swelled impressively.

She looked away.

"The fuck happened to you?"

"Seifer Almasy, you little shit, how many times have I told you to refrain from using that kind of language in front of ladies?" Kadowaki selected a clipboard from her desk and raised it menacingly, advancing on him.

"Ow, shit! _Ok_, goddammit."

Quistis coughed a discreet laugh into the crook of her arm. It was not often she got to witness Seifer Almasy beaten down by a woman three times his age armed with nothing more than a thin piece of wood and the glare she skewered him with from her kindly mother's face.

"What'd you want?" he demanded rudely, and Kadowaki poked him sharply in the stomach with her pen. He probably did not even notice it, judging by the knots of six pack she could just faintly see pressed up against the thin material of his shirt-

For _Hyne's _sake.

Selphie was beginning to get to her after all. One kiss after months and months of dry spell, and suddenly she was trying not to picture Seifer Almasy of all people naked.

"Quistis blew her arm open casting Firaga earlier today, and she needs to rest. However, due to the fact that she is almost as stubborn of an ass as you are, she is determined to go back to grading papers in her classroom, so I am assigning you to escort her back to her dorm room and make sure she does not leave until she falls asleep."

"I am perfectly _fine_. Sitting at a desk is not going to take much of a toll on me, anyway."

"I already told you we can do this the hard way or the easy way. You can leave here voluntarily, or Seifer will throw you over his shoulder and haul you back to your room like a sack of grain."

"I will, huh?"

"Yes, you will, or your next vaccination's going in your butt cheek, young man, regardless of where it's supposed to be administered."

"Yeah, well this _lady _here already gave me a black eye the other day that took a fuckin' week to go away. Shit, stop hitting me!" He dodged the next swing of her clipboard. "Why don't you take her back if you're so worried?"

"For Hyne's sake, Seifer, you were trying to punch Irvine's head off his shoulders."

"Because I need to be here. There are two new cadets that remind me a lot of you and Squall who are constantly in here for training injuries; I expect one or both of them should probably be by any minute today, considering the fact that I haven't seen them in a few days." Kadowaki explained, answering his question and ignoring Quistis' interjection.

"And if she anally rapes me with her whip handle? You going to patch _that _up?"

"Seifer!" Quistis protested.

"I'll rip you a whole new asshole for her to stick it in if you don't do what I say."

"_Fine_!" he snarled. His eyes shifted over to Quistis. "Let's go."

"No."

"She's right-you weigh about as much as a damn Chocobo feather. I can carry you over my fuckin-"

"Seifer!" Kadowaki warned forebodingly.

"-shoulder, and then all of Garden can see just what a big mean badass Instructor Trepe is after all while's she's hanging upside down squealing and kicking her legs."

He would do it just to her humiliate her, Quistis knew. She glared at both of them, switching her best detention-_now _look back and forth so they could both feel the full force of its fuming weight, and when neither seemed appropriately impressed, she hopped down with a little huff.

"_Fine_."

* * *

><p>Getting Quistis back to her dorm room proved surprisingly easy.<p>

Getting her into bed was another matter entirely.

It was not the first time Seifer had pictured himself, Quistis, and a bed all in the same room together, but never before had it been in quite this context, with her fully clothed and staring at him from the chair in front of her computer desk, his hand holding back the covers he kept indicating she was to slide underneath. "Get into the bed."

"_No_."

This had been the gist of their exchange for the last half hour or so, and he was at the end of his fucking rope. "What are you, five, goddammit? Get in the _fucking bed_."

"_No_." She kept putting that steely emphasis on the word he was so thoroughly sick of hearing now, a chill like the glacial bite of Shiva chewing away childhood memories.

His temper gnawed down to just the feeble strands of the only control he had left, fragile restraint that was the only thing that kept him from lunging across the room and getting both hands around her throat, Seifer threw the blanket back down.

When one step of his long-legged stride took him all the way across the room to loom right in front of her, Quistis scooted her chair backward warily.

Seifer grabbed her by the wrist of her good arm and yanked Quistis onto her feet. He was not letting some bitch who barely came to his shoulder get the better of him; he stooped and swept her up over one shoulder the way he had refrained from doing during their walk back from the infirmary, and then unceremoniously tossed her down on the bed.

She bounced and almost flipped off the other side. "_Seifer_!"

Oops. Fucking brute…rude asshole…yadda yadda yadda.

Seifer put his boot up against the wall to block her escape route as Quistis righted herself.

He knotted his hands across his upraised knee and leaned down so he could look her eye to eye. "If you don't fuckin' stay there, I'm gonna' let Wuss in here after you leave and make him touch everything you own with his dick."

"And how exactly are you going to accomplish that?"

He furrowed his brow at her. "I just painted a scenario for you where Chicken Wuss rubs his penis all over anything you've ever loved, and you want _details_?"

Quistis rolled her eyes.

Seifer took a seat next to her, trying not to think about how very warm she felt, pushed almost flush against him in the narrow space of twin-sized bed frame they shared now.

"How'd you blow your arm open?"

"I don't think that's any of your business."

"Fine. Just trying to make conversation."

"You are the last person I'm interested in having a conversation with right now."

"For fuck's sake, Trepe-the cowboy started it."

"Irvine was just protecting Selphie. You shouldn't have pushed her."

He didn't bother to explain that throwing Messenger Girl down like that had been accidental; she wouldn't believe him anyway. "She was probably going to try and sell that tape on the internet. I protected your virtue."

"If you were interested in doing _that_, you wouldn't have kissed me on film in the first place."

"Are you mad because you liked it?"

"Yes, Seifer; I can't sleep at night for fantasies of you creeping into my dorm room and picking up where you left off." Quistis replied dryly.

He made sure she could see the cocky smile he split his lips apart around. "I'm here now."

"Unfortunately."

The joy of baiting her had not gone away just because he was not her student anymore, and he smiled again, genuinely this time.

She was watching him out of the corner of her eye. "You don't do that very often."

"What?"

"Smile." She hesitated, looking away from him. "It's nice. It reminds me of who you used to be…when we were children."

He was confused. "You mean when I was a nasty little shit who used to break all your toys and wreck your sandcastles?"

"It wasn't always like that. You were nice…occasionally."

He studied the dark curve of lash that was all he could see of her face right now, split down the middle by the fluttering line of spider web blonde that escaped the little clipped-up fishtail she always wore her hair in.

_-she did not hate him right now he could tell he _could _and as he breathed life back into the doll she insisted had drowned tragically in the sweep of tide he had rescued it from just in time, Seifer let himself pretend he saw in her eyes admiration and adoration and the hero worship they would all give him when he was famous-_

Seifer blinked himself back into the present.

Quistis was staring at him from much too close.

Her pink-stained lips-coated in a subtle layer of something that made them glisten with fresh-licked shine-made Seifer want to kiss her.

Everything made him want to kiss her, from the sleepy indolence starting to take over her eyes to the pale arch of throat line vanishing down into the v of t-shirt neckline that was not nearly low enough, in his opinion.

Before Seifer could do anything monumentally stupid, he grasped Quistis by the shoulder and tipped her over, down onto the bed where he pinned her with his hands for a moment, not letting himself linger too long because the idiot thoughts that would get him castrated were starting to circulate again; he let up with a smile, flicking hair from her narrowed eyes.

"Night, Instructor. Remember what I said about Wuss."

And then he left, slamming the door behind him harder than he'd meant to, standing for a moment in the hallway with staring cadets swirling around him, the frown on his forehead breaking up the line of his scar.

When he walked forward into the churning throng of them, he did not look back.

* * *

><p>When the pieces of nightmare that are the reminders of her warrior's life pull and suck and tug, she lets herself fade back into the memory of yellow beach sand and the overturned bowl of blue sky above that is her infancy.<p>

Seifer and Matron are playing tag, and the part of her that is not child Quistis running down the beach to join them, the part of her that is the silent watcher who has already seen how her mother's story will end, this part of her remembers what they are going to become, and she wonders-

_-should I have known maybe I should have known-_

But she does not-she has never even sort of guessed that perhaps this woman and this boy who will one day be a man-

This woman and this boy, this mother and this son-

One day, they will try to break the world.

This boy with his laughing eyes and his knight's dreams, this boy who smashes her toys and rescues her dolls and saves her from dragons-

This boy will fracture under her mother's loving fingertips, and she will not know how to save him.

And she thinks as she runs-

_-this is not how the dream is supposed to go we're all safe here I don't want to remember anything I don't want to know that she's dead I _don't _know that she's dead she's right there and seifer-_

Seifer is smiling, he is laughing, and his forehead is still infant velvet, perfect and unmarked and soft as baby down beneath the fingers she stretches up to touch it.

"Come on, Quisty!" her mother calls to her, and her dress billows like the plumes of sheet she has hung up to dry on the line in front of her home-

She has Seifer by the hand now, by the arm, and suddenly he is crying, suddenly he is _screaming_, and faultless blue warps and twists into mottled purple storm and her mother, her mother-

Her mother is smiling as she drowns him.

* * *

><p>Quistis jolted out of bed with a start, and the tangled roll of knotted bedcover her sheets had twisted into jerked her legs as she tried to sit up, almost pitching her over the side.<p>

Her phone was ringing.

She groped blindly across the nightstand for her glasses, squinting through layers of glutinous slumber at the alarm clock that was nothing more than a green-tinged smear in front of her-

The hand holding her glasses found her face, and suddenly she could see again.

1:00 A.M.

To her surprise, she had gone to sleep shortly after Seifer left, and apparently had, for all intents and purposes, remained dead to the world for the next several hours, until the shrill scream of her phone ripped her from the dream she was more than happy to let go.

Quistis rubbed sleep from her eyes. "Hello?" Her room was cold; she untwisted the blankets with a sharp jerk and drew them up to her chin, the phone bleeding ice into the side of her face.

"Oh good, you're awake!" Rinoa's disembodied voice said brightly, but there was something hollow about it, something forced and false driving that pretense of cheer, and Quistis sat up with a frown.

"I am now. Is something wrong?"

"I…um…kind of need to talk to you about something."

"At 1:00 in the morning?"

"It's really, really important."

It was probably something along the lines of the scheme concocted by Rinoa and Selphie to lure her out in the middle of the night for drinks at a popular Balamb tavern where they had attempted to get her drunk enough to welcome advances from a few of the men eyeing her. It had only worked once-the luring, not the get-Quistis-annihilated-and-laid part-but that did not prevent them from trying and trying again.

"Can I come to your room?"

That was not their usual method, and again she heard something in Rinoa's voice that she did not like.

Quistis flipped on her lamp, its light pushing the shadows still wearing Matron's face to the edge of her bed. "I suppose, but Rinoa-"

"Ok, thanks-see you in a few, bye!"

She sighed and rubbed her eyes again. She really needed friends who understood that this was a time of morning for homeless people and serial killers, not decent hard-working citizens who just wanted a little Hyne-damned sleep.

She forced herself out of bed, shivering in the pre-dawn chill of her tiny room, and began to pull the covers back into the smooth-ironed perfection her nightmare had ruined. She might as well get used to the idea that she would not be going back to sleep, not with the way Rinoa talked. Maybe it was all right; she'd already put in almost a full night's sleep, and though she could easily have rested another several hours, Quistis supposed getting up a few hours early would not kill her.

Still. This had better be as important as Rinoa had implied, and not related to the thankfully short-lived hair crisis she had suffered a few months ago. Unbeknownst to her, the three day span of frighteningly bad hair she had been forced to stuff under the fluffy pink fedora Selphie had given her in support of the disaster was a direct result from something Zell had put into her shampoo. It was a secret Quistis had promised to take to her grave; she didn't know exactly what he had done, but she had to admit seeing Rinoa's formerly sleek and flawless hair standing up in the frizzy ringlets of monstrous curl even Squall noticed had been one of the more amusing things she'd witnessed recently.

Four months later, she was still talking about it sometimes, terrified that it would happen again. She did not seem to realize that a bad hair day was not exactly a reason to call emergency midnight meetings between herself, Quistis and Selphie-though Selphie seemed to understand. Maybe Quistis herself just did not comprehend all the complex ins and outs of being a girl since, as Selphie helpfully pointed out, she was apparently 'basically almost a guy anyway.' This conclusion had been reached because Quistis did not like the color pink, and because she did not care if certain pants made her butt appear larger than others so long as they were functional and did not interfere with her ability to fight.

The Trepies would probably heartily disagree with that finding.

Before she could stop herself, Quistis found herself seated at the desk in front of her computer, drumming her fingers while she waited for it to boot up. 'A few' to Rinoa generally meant somewhere in the ballpark of about fifteen minutes to three hours, so she had a bit of time to herself for the moment.

She navigated into her e-mail to check new messages, and was embarrassed to note that she felt a little disappointed when there was nothing recent from her poetic admirer.

Perhaps he had a life that did not revolve around sitting in front of his computer all day.

She was about to close out of the window when she noticed '3877SA' in her contacts list, lit up to indicate online status.

Quistis let her fingers hover uncertainly over the keyboard for a moment. Why not?

**quistis_trepe_14: Up late?**

She sucked in her breath just a little, waiting.

**3877SA: usually am**

**quistis_trepe_14: Can I ask who you are?**

**3877SA: you could but that would be stupid because if i wanted you to know who i was i wouldn't be sending you anonymous e-mails, would i?**

**quistis_trepe_14: True enough. That's why I haven't attempted to respond to any of your e-mails, but when I saw you on-line…I was curious and wondered if you'd reply. Can I at least ask how you know some of my favorite poems?**

**3877SA: no.**

**quistis_trepe_14: …All right. What about a hint? A small one?**

**3877SA: i'm taller than your big toe, but shorter than garden.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Very clever. Also, you don't actually know how long my big toe is, so how do you know that's a claim you can safely make?**

**3877SA: or do I?**

**quistis_trepe_14: That's not creepy.**

**3877SA: for all you know, i'm watching you right now. **

**quistis_trepe_14: I hate to disappoint your probably fertile imagination, but all my blinds are closed. **

**3877SA: closed circuit camera.**

**quistis_trepe_14: And how exactly did you get it in here?**

**3877SA: i'm invisible. **

**quistis_trepe_14: Then why would you need a camera at all? You could sit in my room and I'd never even know.**

**3877SA: touche. **

**quistis_trepe_14: So since we have established that you are A. Bigger than my big toe but not bigger than Garden and B. Not watching me right this very moment, is there anything else you'd care to share about yourself?**

**3877SA: when i was a kid i used to eat dirt rocks sometimes. **

**quistis_trepe_14: That was…profound. And not exactly mind-blowing; I grew up with a boy who used to do that occasionally. Although generally just to prove that he would do anything the rest of us were too scared to. **

**3877SA: i bet he was awesome.**

**quistis_trepe_14: He was more the kind of child that gave babysitters nightmares. **

**quistis_trepe_14: Will you answer **_**any **_**of my questions?**

**3877SA: depends.**

**quistis_trepe_14: On?**

**3877SA: what they are.**

**quistis_trepe_14: All right. Are you male, at least?**

**3877SA: extremely.**

**quistis_trepe_14: You obviously go to Garden, judging by your e-mail address. Are you a cadet here? A SeeD?**

**3877SA: next question.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Ok. Tell me something about yourself. Something that doesn't fit into the category of strange things you ingested as a child.**

**3877SA: that's not a question.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Humor me, please.**

**3877SA: fine…**

**3877SA: did you ever want something so bad you spent your whole life trying to get it, then when you had it you realized it was all a bunch of shit and you just wasted your entire existence on something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy? **

Quistis leaned an elbow on her desk, chin in hand. That was far more philosophical then she'd expected from her correspondent's formerly flippant attitude. She focused on the staccato eye flicker of cursor winking at her from the box of instant messenger window taking up most of her screen, and wondered who this mysterious man was. Another instructor here at Garden? A student, even? What did he look like?

Her mind sketched in the details of his appearance-a curve of hair over long-lashed eye just pretty enough, sensual kissing lips and the sensitive artist's brow of perpetually thought-crinkled forehead skin. He was tall, of course, built like a soldier but nothing over-the-top-leanly muscled and not the steroidal bulk of a career bodybuilder, and in his free time he studied Steinhart and Langert and any other number of classic lyricists. He believed in sunset strolls and the lost art of chivalry, and he did not even care if she spent an extra hour on her hair before heading out to meet him.

She smiled at herself.

He was probably stunted and miserable and horribly-mannered, the kind of man who interacted with women under the ambiguity of a screen name because he did not know how to relate to them in real life. Still, he had just opened a part of himself to her that he had not needed to, and she took her chin back out of her palm.

**quistis_trepe_14: When I was a child, I wanted to be just like my mother. (My adoptive mother, that is. I don't have many memories of my real mother-she died when I was very young.) She was kind and pretty and always knew what to say when we fell down and skinned our knees, and my adoptive father absolutely doted on her. **

**quistis_trepe_14: But if anything tried to harm us, she was as fierce as a Ruby Dragon. She was strong and beautiful and gentle-and she was the greatest woman I'd ever known. I used to tell myself that I would be just like that, when I grew up.**

**quistis_trepe_14: And then I forgot her. Now, thinking about it, I don't know how I ever could have done that, but it happened, and for a long time I did not remember her. And then when I did, it was only because she'd done something horrible. It was not her fault, but she still hurt the children she had always done everything she could to protect very badly, and it made me wonder if one day I would do the same to my friends, because even though I didn't remember her, there was a part of me that still retained the faint shadow of the hero I had built her up to be in my mind, and that was what I modeled myself after. **

**quistis_trepe_14: It was…frightening how easily the woman who used to bake me cookies and kiss my bruised elbows became what she did, how quickly someone was able to warp her into something I trained most of my life to kill.**

**quistis_trepe_14: I apologize for the novel. The short of it is…yes, I do think I know what you mean. **

**3877SA: no…it's ok. i had a mother like that once too.**

A sudden banging at her door snapped Quistis' head up, and she typed out a hasty good-bye before closing out of the conversation.

To her surprise, it was Zell and not Rinoa who pushed inside her room, his hair disheveled and something that looked very like dried cafeteria food zigzagging in a crust like flaking scar tissue across his cheek tattoo.

"What are you doing here?"

Zell pulled the door out of her hands and slammed it. "Quisty, I gotta' hide!"

"And so you assumed my dorm room at 1:30 in the morning was the best place to do so?"

He glanced frantically around her room.

"What is going on?"

"_She's coming_."

"_Who _is coming?" Quistis demanded, some of her exasperation creeping into her voice now. Three hours before she would normally even be awake, and already her day was proving to be far more adventurous than her usual afternoon of classroom lectures and homework grading.

"You know that crazy bitch who works in the cafeteria? The one who's always hiding the hot dogs from me?"

"Zell, there is no hot dog conspiracy." She had already been over this many times with him, and why she tried again Quistis had no idea.

"Well, she did it to me _again _today." he whispered, completely ignoring what she'd just said. "So tonight I snuck in there and switched all her ladles and stuff around and wrapped a bunch of her cooking stuff in, like, eighty layers of toilet paper, and she caught me while I was taping up these Xerox copies I took of my butt, and she chased me all the way up here. I don't think she ever leaves, and now you hafta' hide me, or I'm gonna' die." He gave her a pleading look. "I'm too _young _to die, Quisty. Balamb's holding its first hot dog eating contest this year, and I can't crap out before I even have a _chance _at it."

"Zell, that poor lunch lady is not out to get you; stop tormenting her and go back to your own room."

"She'll _kill _me, Quisty! I'm not even kidding!"

"Knock knock!" Rinoa called loudly, poking her head inside. "Hey, what are you doing here?"

"Hiding."

"_Leaving_." Quistis said.

"I'll be really quiet. You girls won't even know I'm here."

Yes, because one of the things Zell did best was not talking.

Quistis made shooing motions at him. Rinoa put her hands on her hips and stabbed him with her meanest glare, which admittedly was about as intimidating as Zell in his Chocobo costume trying to start a fight with Seifer, who had nearly pulled a muscle laughing at the spectacle of his childhood rival in ruffled yellow feathers.

"This is _girl _time!" Rinoa insisted.

"So? That's discrimination, huh, Quisty? You always used to say people shouldn't be judged on their gender, right?"

She had meant that women should not be automatically passed over for important positions merely because of their anatomical differences from the men who ruled the workplace, not that clueless male friends ought to be privy to discussions about breast size, but she supposed he would interpret it however he wanted.

She turned to Rinoa. "Yesterday was the beginning of my period and it was odd, because normally the flow is very light, but I had all sorts of-"

"OhHynedammitgrossno!" He was to the door and back out it before Quistis' brain could fully catch up with the fact that he was moving, and she muffled a laugh in the curve of her palm. "All right; what was so important it absolutely could not wait until a reasonable hour?"

The look on Rinoa's face made her very, very nervous. Quistis pasted on her best stern Instructor look, pinning her friend with it as Squall's pretty little girlfriend twisted her hands together and sucked one corner of her mouth in between her teeth.

"Please tell me you haven't-"

"Quisty, I think I might be pregnant."

**A/N: The idea of the instant message conversations came from Message in a Bottle by Lady Ankaa; if you haven't read it already, I suggest you swing by and do so. Thanks for reading!**


	10. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

Balamb Garden

Balamb

Staring at Rinoa across the military uniformity of her neatly-made bed, Quistis blinked.

She could not stop blinking.

"I-excuse me?"

"I'm pregnant. Well, I _think _so. I'm not sure."

"I heard you. I just-" She put a hand to her forehead. "Rinoa, this is _not _the time to-"

"I _know_. I didn't plan it."

"But you said you're not sure? What made you think you were in the first place?"

"I've been sick a lot; I keep throwing up and stuff…and my boobs hurt. And…" Her mouth twitched in the help-me lip tremble of vulnerable damsel look that had inexplicably won Squall's heart, the one Quistis could not have emulated even a little. It was the kind of look men fell all over themselves to erase, the kind of please-save-me stare that launched ships and started wars and ended alliances, and it was why Rinoa lived the kind of epic love story that Quistis would never have. "I'm late."

"Did you take a test?"

"Yeah; one of the home ones, and it was positive, but you know, I hear sometimes those aren't accurate, you know?"

She was shaking. She was shaking and holding back tears in the balled-up fist clench of desperate control that strained her whole hand, and the frozen disbelief of Quistis' heart thawed, just a little.

"They're pretty accurate, Rinoa." she said gently, and her friend's face tensed up and then fell completely, and she sank down onto the bedcovers Quistis had just perfected, putting her forehead into her hands.

"I don't know what to do."

"Does Squall know?" Quistis asked gently.

"No." She sniffled. "I didn't want to tell him…" She hiccupped. "Until I was totally sure."

"We'll take you to the infirmary for a blood test later today."

"But what am I gonna' _do_?"

She did not know.

She was supposed to-she was well aware of that. Quistis Trepe was the adhesive of the bond that held them all together, the calm in the hurricane eye combination of Zell Dincht and Selphie Tilmitt, the empirical mother figure they had all lost when Edea Kramer's neck sprayed life the same color as the fingers of setting sun bringing realistic flush to her dead cheeks.

And she always, absolutely, had the answer to each of their questions.

_-quisty my doll's sick what do I do quisty irvy and I have a date should I wear this lipstick or that one quisty what do I _do _I lost these papers squall gave me to file and I don't know where they _are_-_

They came to her because she _knew_. She always did.

And now she did not.

She could only stare and stare and stare, everything that was not her friend's burgeoning drama wisping away: her cagey new suitor and the blank marble statues she had made of her student's faces, the nightmare that was part childhood memory still holding her chest in its cold, cold garrote grip-

Rinoa Heartilly might be pregnant. Was very probably so. Rinoa Heartilly, sorceress Rinoa, the sweet-faced young woman they were beginning to convince themselves might be the Next Great Evil every newspaper and anchor man needed to formulate the biggest story of their lives_. _

Her friend, practically her _sister_, who might pass her abilities along to her child. Quistis did not understand how such power transferred-none of them did, really-though she had made a brief study of it out of curiosity one sunny afternoon when she for once had nothing more pressing than thumb twiddling to get to. There was a persistent theory-from trustworthy sources, at that-theorizing that at the moment of possession, a person's molecular structure actually shifted. This was necessary to transform the host body into something that could house the sorceress' power without, well, exploding, changing a normal human being into someone who did not merely stock a few attack spells any third year cadet could begin tentatively experimenting with, but was essentially a living, breathing draw point.

Modern science had not even begun to fathom all the intricacies of a problem thought to be eradicated long ago, and conjectures from the practical to the knee jerk wildness born of misunderstood fear abounded. She had seen everything from rants claiming that in order to take on such power, a person needed to shed her soul first-to make room, Quistis supposed-all the way to the mind-bending stupidity of one blogger who insisted that sorceresses were in fact a heretofore extinct branch of the Chocobo race brought about through cross breeding with aliens.

There was a small part of her that wondered if Zell had written that one.

The one question that persisted in everyone's mind seemed to be whether or not a sorceress' powers were genetic, and if so, just what the chances were of passing them on to any offspring.

She did not think they really wanted it answered.

Rinoa was looking at her again, with the tremulous hope that sparked rare anger inside Quistis' chest.

She did not-_could not_-always know what to do, how to react; how could they place this burden on her, this unblinking fix-it-please approach that Edea had never even blinked at-

How could they expect her to just take over as their mentor, a therapist/teacher/friend/mother all rolled into one, when she organized stacks of perfectly-clipped-together paperwork and days of the week outfits and the pots and tubes and sticks of lip gloss Selphie kept buying for her-

Because deep down, Quistis Trepe was nothing more than an honest-to-Hyne fraud.

A failure of the worst kind who had lost her license and her mother and the untainted happiness Matron's beach gave her each night, and only by some fluke of fate had she stumbled full circle around back to the first again.

She made her bed each morning and tied her running shoes by silent counts of 2's and drank her coffee exactly the same way, because these were the only things she could still control in a world rapidly shredding apart around her. These were the only things she could still be _sure _of, in a world where her students died around her, blade-spit and whip-strangled and burned alive.

But none of this was Rinoa's fault. None of this was her burden, and Quistis made herself breathe cold air, sucking it down in ribbons that snuffed the bonfire conflagration in her chest.

She smiled patiently. "You go back to bed, get some sleep, and in a few hours or so when everyone's awake I'll take you to Dr. Kadowaki and we'll have a blood test done. There's no reason to panic until we know for sure." Quistis ducked into her bathroom for just a moment, coming out with a handful of tissue she passed to Rinoa, who took it gratefully. "You're not alone. Whatever happens-whatever needs to be done about this, I'm right here, all right?"

Rinoa sniffled again. "Thanks, Quisty. I love you."

She loved an image, a myth, but that was all right.

She had become the fantasy for so long, Quistis did not even know who she was really supposed to be anymore, the real woman with the hopes and dreams and secret impractical wishes, and not the pedestal-set icon they all worshipped.

* * *

><p>Deling City<p>

2 Years Ago

You are Seifer Almasy.

And this is how you feel:

An arch of galaxy wheels with shotgun sprays of diamond scatter over your head. You are not wearing shoes, and between your toes your mother's beach scrapes flicks of sandpaper tongue across bare flesh.

The ocean is an endless mirror of flat black glass. It reflects the buckshot shrapnel of distant stars, and the bloody disc of moon that shines like new dawn sun.

It is a graveyard.

You see a flash of gold and blank shine blue marble and the curve of wax doll forehead you somehow know will one day be as flawed as your own-

Smiling father's lips and hatless cowboy's ponytail-

A puppet's hinged jaw of crybaby mouth-

And then this mirror, this placid looking glass that is a reflection of your dark, dark soul, shows you something else.

It is your mother's head, and you are holding it in your hand. Fist-tangled black like plumes of raven's wing knot your fingers, and in the doll's glass of dead pupil you raise to look eye to eye, you see your face again.

It is smiling-inside you are weeping, you are _shrieking_-but outside-

Outside you grin the forced teeth grit of take-the-fucking-picture-_now _grimace, and you cannot stop.

Your other hand holds stained murder weapon, and inside your heart there is something as cold as a burned-out star, eating everything.

Your brothers your sisters-your mother your father-

You have killed them all.

They stare soundless accusations from the ocean you have made into their tomb, and behind you, your home spits them all, the way they are now-

Smiling laughing skipping humming-

Blue and peach blue and black inked tattoo strands-

Back-tipped hat brim and shoulder-slung gun and morning sunshine smile-

Identical scar slash and hair the color of your mother's-

And you are running, you are _sprinting _through windless night and when you reach them your murderer's weapon comes up, swings around, and you stab morning sunshine smile and slide up through the pale jaw line underneath back-tipped hat brim, and you kill and kill and _kill_, and at your feet-

Your mother's disembodied head smiles.

You make identical scar slash into something wider, something that smiles open all the way down to blade-cut ribcage, and then you bury your killer's tool like an axe, through the frail arch of nose piece that separates like her head.

_-good job boy mommy loves you don't forget that ok seifer mommy loves you mommy will _always _love you-_

You breathe like a winded runner.

Inside, you are still screaming, but your mother-she is smiling, she is _happy_, and so you spin like a dancer, and force your weapon down point-first into the heart that is somehow still beating inside her pretty instructor's throat, and you pin her like a fish, still wriggling on the hook.

You are Seifer Almasy, and this is what she makes you dream every night.

* * *

><p>Balamb Garden<p>

Balamb

Seifer stuffed both feet into his boots and stood up to lace them, double-knotting both with a jerk that burned his fingertips.

He stared at himself in his dresser mirror for a moment, and then he pulled a knit cap down over his hair-needed to cut the fucking shit soon; it was getting too long for his liking-and then he headed out the door.

Garden was barely even moving at this hour, just a few half-awake cadets shuffling here and there, hardly paying him any attention as he swept down the hall, his trench coat rippling like ocean wake behind him.

Outside, the sun was just rising, and he watched it crest remote hill top, spilling rose glow like diluted blood. There was no Trabian wind front to scour even the remotest memory of warmth from his body, but early spring mornings in Balamb were tepid at best, ball-numbing at worst.

This morning definitely landed firmly in the latter category, and Seifer wished he'd get a fucking coat that wasn't hole-riddled and worn thin along the seams and elbows.

One that wasn't, you know, fucking coated in the old ghosts of the innocents his mother had made him slaughter.

The trip from Garden to the sleepy harbor town of Balamb-already somewhat active even at this time; those fisherman were early fucking risers, if you could say anything about them-did not take long, and he made the journey briskly. He had forgotten his gloves, so he shoved both hands into the pockets of the plain black uniform pants he'd pulled from the crumpled ball most of his laundry ended up, listening to his coat whisper out around his sides.

He wondered which lap of her morning jog Quistis had reached.

He knew that's what she was doing right now, because on mornings when the nightmares would not let him fall back into a sleep that would replenish and not horrify, he spent the five minutes it took to wrestle his goddamn window open-he really needed some kind of fucking lubricant for that thing-and stuck his head out it, inhaling the fresh oxygen that burned away some of the phantoms following him into daytime.

And there she was, 5:00 on the dot each morning, bundled up in coat and gloves and the perfect bow ties of her combat boots during colder weather, showing him a flash of lean thigh in jogging shorts that made him smirk during warmer months.

A swish of ponytail, pump of the arms-piston churn of model-built legs-

He always let himself forget how creepy he was being, and spent several minutes watching her, sitting on the ledge of that window with one foot propped up against the sagging, splintered frame.

She ran like she was trying to get away from something.

He knew the feeling.

The sleepy main square of Balamb spread out around him, crawling with just a few of the typical early risers-dock workers and little old women hobbling along on canes, and some jerk sprawled out along the edge of fountain he could see ahead. Probably some douche using the sunrise as inspiration for his latest collection of sniveling emo lyrics, either because he thought they'd get him laid, or because he was a whiny fag.

Seifer skirted him. He wasn't heading anywhere particular anyway, just aimlessly walking to shake off the darkness that kept coming for him long after slumber peeled off the final strand of fraying hangman's knot that throat gripped him each night.

The guy sat up.

Out of the corner of his eye, Seifer noticed a flash of blonde.

He kept walking.

"Almasy!"

Wuss. Goddammit. Was it so much to fucking ask to get a little time to himself, a casual little stroll through the memory lane that for most people just held childhood recollections but for Seifer Almasy was littered with the severed body parts of the phantoms that chased him from his sleep? Couldn't he just have a little fucking _privacy _while his shivering body twitched off the last few memories of Quistis' ripped-open neck?

He spun on a heel, glaring. "The fuck are you doing out here this early?"

Zell stared out at him past spikes of gold. 5:30 in the fucking morning, and he still had enough time and presence of mind to lube his fucking hair up like he was settling in for the night, dick in one hand, titty mag in the other.

"What are you doing here?"

Dodging shadows. Evading demons that he could never really outrun, not when they writhed in coils of nesting reptiles inside him.

"Getting you a prostitute." he said. "I used to take pity on virgins by, you know, popping their cherries, but since I'd rather rub my dick raw with sandpaper than be the one to make you a man, I thought my good deed for this year could be giving your hand a break."

Zell flushed, and scowled.

The old anger was still there then, the lifetime enmity Seifer knew had not been wiped out by a single night of breaking skulls and glimpsing real living, feeling human being under the armor he carefully wrapped himself in. He could nudge it just a little, fan the flames, stoke the forge-

And they could go back to being Seifer and Chicken Wuss, boy Seifer and crybaby Zell, wrestling in the low tide pools he held that bristly blonde head underneath, punching and kicking and biting and glaring across the rows of detention room school desks between them.

But he just didn't goddamn well feel like it. He took one hand out of his pocket, used it to scratch his nose, watched the heat climb back down from Dincht's cheeks-

And kept his mouth shut, giving his nasty smile but not saying anything, letting the idiot make of it what he would. If Wuss wanted to launch himself at Seifer's throat, he was ready for that, _hungering _for that-

But if he wanted to sit there not saying anything either, not apologizing but not provoking, just letting silence build like the layers of companionable quiet only really good friends shared between them…Seifer thought he might be all right with that too.

He might want that even more than he wanted to feel Zell's nose shatter under his fist, and he wondered what the fuck was wrong with him.

He let the silence hang long enough to figure out that Wuss wasn't going to start anything, and then Seifer lowered himself down onto the lip of fountain paint spotted in drips of water dark as oil stains, careful to keep several feet between them.

In this square of quiet grass and swept-clean sidewalk and burbling fountain, the sun flatted out into an umbrella layer of warmth.

He tipped his face back to smile up into it, just a brief lip flicker that he hoped the other man didn't think was because of him.

"So…why are you out here?" Zell asked again tentatively, and out of the corner of his eye, Seifer watched him lounge back down like he owned the whole fucking thing, his hands laced behind his head.

"Walking." He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets.

"Kinda' early for that, huh?"

"Yeah-kinda' like it's way too fucking early for you to have rolled your ass out of bed." Most days he spotted Zell slam into the teeming between-class crowd he parted around him like he was some kind of deploying torpedo around mid-noon or so, wearing the wild-eyed look that told him someone was going to ride his ass like a used-up old hooker for not getting out of bed sooner.

"Yeah, uh…" He used his foot to scratch an itch on his right calf. "See, I sorta' feel guilty for screwin' up that mission and all, so-"

"Meaning Quistis threatened to take her whip to your balls if you didn't fix your fuck up."

"No! I really do feel-well, a little; man, she's scary when she wants to be-but anyway, I've been hangin' out here for the last few mornings or so, hopin' to see something. The bar Kinneas saw that guy going into is just around the corner, so I thought maybe I'd see somethin' suspicious and maybe I could make up for screwin' up when Quisty was counting on me."

"No one's figured out who that guy is yet?"

"Nah. Irvine just recognized him as someone he saw around Garden a few times, but he didn't know his name, and no one knew who it was when he described him. We had him go through a bunch of the files in Squall's office lookin' at everyone's pictures, but none of 'em have matched so far, and it's kinda' hard to tell anyway-people look a lot different in their I.D. pictures."

"That's because those things look like they were taken by Messenger Girl on fucking speed."

He watched Zell's shoulder twitch in a shrug.

Seifer let himself lapse back into silence, his ass going numb against the curve of damp cement they shared.

"You're the guy sending Quisty all that poetry, huh?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Seifer snapped.

"Come on; I know you heard me n' Kinneas talking. It's you, right?"

Seifer glared at him.

Zell guffawed. "Man, Quisty's gonna' be pissed. She probably thinks it's some sensitive, artsy fartsy dude who quotes that stuff at the sunset. Didn't know you had it in ya.'"

Seifer's glare turned into a full scowl. "What the hell makes you think I'd have anything to do with something like that?"

"I saw your face when Kinneas an' me were talkin' about it. And it doesn't sound like it's a Trepie doing it, from what Irvine told me. Those assholes don't know anything about what she really likes, you know? They just think she's pretty, she's smart, and they put her up on this pedestal and they don't even really care that she's a real person-she's like a god to them, or something."

"Just because it's not a Trepie doesn't mean it's me." Seifer leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, glaring out into the sunrise.

"Yeah, maybe, but you know, Quistis gave me this bag of candy hearts some jerk'd put on her desk the other day to replace some candy she took from me a while back, and she said it was for you, for your birthday because nobody else was gonna' remember."

Seifer felt a sizzle beginning inside his chest, crisping the edges of his heart.

"She said you made fun of some poetry she was readin', and then she started complaining about how she couldn't find the book and she was worried the library might have misplaced it." His foot bounced up and down, like he was keeping time to some internal beat. "I'm not smart like Quisty, but I'm not that dumb either, man."

Seifer looked down at his hands. They had coiled themselves into a knot like the one that balled up inside his chest, the one that was on fire thinking about her.

"If you're messin' with her, though, playin' some kind of joke-I'll pull your head off. I ain't shittin' you, man." Zell said, quietly solemn.

"It's not a joke." he ground out between clenched teeth.

"So you really like her, huh?"

"I'm gonna' snap your neck if you don't drop this line of questioning. _Now_."

"Fine. But just so ya' know, not wanting to talk about it's sorta' a dead giveaway that you're not just trying to get in her pants."

* * *

><p>It felt odd lying there, studying Almasy through fibers of lash like jailhouse bars and realizing he was actually looking at a human being.<p>

He had always been Seifer the Bully, Almasy the Asshole, not a person but an abstract twist of neurons and molecules and skin cells all clustered together into something that cleverly resembled a human but housed just inhumane animal instinct on the inside.

Who'd a thunk the creep who used to kick him under the dinner table when Matron wasn't paying attention was even capable of love, let alone the kind that inspired Seifer Almasy of all people to read poetry, huh?

This was the same guy who'd incapacitated him with the arc of wet towel his graceful wrist flick cracked across Zell's balls hard enough to shoot stars across his vision. The same guy who made sure to viciously, conscientiously let himself into each stall strung out in the long row of toilets across from the open space of damp tile where Zell was just finishing up his shower, flushing each.

The same guy who broke his nose in the training center one afternoon, just because he could.

He was still looking at that same man-twist of sneer and wrinkle of scar-broken frown line, eye glint of mess-with-me-fuckin'-_now_-why-don'tcha-

But he was starting to wonder if that was just a distraction layer of mask, and something else-something flawed and self-conscious and _real _just like the rest of them all had-lurked underneath all that, something that e-mailed his friend poetry and jumped into a snarl of bar room brawl to protect her honor without a second thought.

Something he was starting to think he could, just maybe, make amends with.

It was all kind of screw-me-in-the-ass-sideways mind bending.

He closed his eyes and went back to letting the climbing sun pound his muscles into relaxed puddles of kneaded clay beneath his heavy winter coat.

"Mr. Zell? Is that you?"

He shot up like he was the puppet and that voice the string, and beside him Seifer's head rotated slowly to face him.

"What the hell was that?"

She waved at Zell from the open door of her shop, smiling come-hither promise to him across the square of sun-warmed downtown that had suddenly gone as cold as his leaden, malfunctioning heart.

Oh _shit_.

Seifer followed his line of vision to the woman standing at the end of it, and Zell made it to his feet before Almasy could even process the horrifying reality that was toothless prune mouth and sagging centenarian face.

The little prick was _laughing_. "Is that your girlfriend, Wuss?"

"Mr. Zell, I need some help getting some things down from storage."

"'Mr. Zell?'"

"I gotta' get the hell out of here!" Zell hissed, panic like the adrenal kick of battlefield terror getting its fist around him, and squeezing. "I went in there to help her out one time, right? Thinking ok, here's this old lady who needs some help, I'll be a gentleman and all that and she tried to _rape _me, swear to Hyne. I get in there and she closes the door and suddenly she's talking about how long it's been since she's had a handsome young man walk into her life, and dude-I swear to goddamned _Hyne _this is true-all of a sudden she's feelin' up my ass. And then she backs me into a wall, and she's trying to tear off my clothes! That old bat is freakin' crazy, I'm serious!"

Seifer had himself by the stomach now, bent over double.

God_dammit_-this was not a hyne damn freaking laughing matter-

"Mr. Zell, who's your friend?"

She was coming toward them now, and that seemed to snap Seifer abruptly out of his fit-he came to his feet as quickly as Zell had, looking less amused now that her attention had expanded to encompass him as well.

"Whoo-Mr. Zell, your friend's just as handsome as you are! Why don't you strapping young men come inside and help me re-arrange a few things?"

"Look, Wuss, I'm pretty sure we can take her if it comes down to it."

She reached Seifer first, squinting up at him through the half-blind film of her best eye, and he crossed his arms with a little smirk.

And then she poked him firmly in the crotch with her finger, and he jumped with a yelp like she'd just stabbed him.

"Oh, that's very nice." She smacked her gums at him.

"What the _fuck_-" he roared, and then he was sprinting right alongside Zell, spurred on by his '_Run _goddammit _now_,' making for Garden like they had the whole Galbadian army up their ass, Seifer's coat cracking behind him like the thunder roll of her voice.

"WHERE ARE YOU BOYS GOING MR. ZELL, PLEASE COME BACK!"

* * *

><p>The world became an arc of crashing sea wave around her.<p>

She knew it had, because everything pond rippled and swayed and bent like melting plastic, like the static gray fuzz of Time Compression, and she could not understand how to stand up anymore.

She got the itchy crinkle of exam table paper under her legs-that she could comprehend, could shape her mind around, and that crumpled fold of line Quisty always got across her forehead when she was concerned-

That, Rinoa knew.

What she did not know was Dr. Kadowaki's mouth, spilling words that could not be truths.

_"Rinoa, you're going to be a mother." _

No she _wasn't_-she couldn't be a mother, not when she was only nineteen, not when she did not have a single clue how to even care for herself, let alone a child, not when they would murder this new life she had created together with Squall, just because Rinoa Heartilly was its mother-

She touched her stomach tentatively.

_"Rinoa, are you all right?" _

She could not hear them in this snow globe of ocean that snapped into place around her like the shimmering soap bubble of Protect, not really-their words hit like bullets, like world-ending meteor showers, but that arch of poised water held them back, kept them out, until it was all just one meaningless susurrant of background noise.

_Squall-Squall I need you-you _promised_-_

He had _said _he would always be here, whenever she needed him.

She needed him now, and where was he-back in his office, back behind his desk, putting first all the administrative duties and stacks and requests that had all become more important to him than her.

She had not told him because she wasn't sure. She had not kept this to herself because she did not want to worry him with something that might not even be a problem, as she had let Quistis believe.

She had hidden this, she had deep-buried this monumental reality under the layers of scared certainty she had put off confronting for weeks, because he would not want this child.

He would not want this miracle of growing infant that was part him, and maybe, he would not even want her anymore.

She could not stand that. She could make herself huddle amidst Garden's uppermost spires, raining death like the tears that streaked her cheeks, and she could make herself forget the faces that burned and exploded and split apart beneath her fatal downpour-

But she could not lose him.

She had forgotten how to exist in a world that did not have Squall Leonhart.

Quistis could not reach her through her tide pulse of ocean. She could see her trying to, could see her calling, her lips twitching in spasms of sound that never even reached her, but she could not feel the hand her friend set on her shoulder, and she could not feel any warmth in a palm that must be burning with it.

Everything was cold. Everything was cold yet somehow hot, and she was burning, she was _burning_, and he-

He was not here to save her as the burning reached her heart, as she finally figured out that kiln heat was the nuclear force of her building sobs, and when Rinoa slumped forward crying, it was Quistis who caught her instead.

_You promised. You _promised_!_

* * *

><p><strong>quistis_trepe_14: Will you allow me a few more questions tonight?<strong>

**3877SA: maybe. **

**quistis_trepe_14: Favorite color?**

**3877SA: really?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Well, since I already know you're not going to answer my more burning one about who you really are, why not?**

**3877SA: fine. yellow. **

**quistis_trepe_14: Why?**

**3877SA: what the hell do ya' mean, why? because it is.**

**quistis_trepe_14: There has to be some reason you like it. Because it's cheerful? It reminds you of the sun? It accessorizes well?**

**3877SA: the last one. if my shirt doesn't match my shoes, then forget about leaving the house.**

**quistis_trepe_14: You don't wear yellow shoes, I'm sure.**

**3877SA: what makes you sure?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Because I have a friend who owns a pair, and they are eye sores.**

**3877SA: so? you don't know me. i might have fashion sense like that guy that always hangs around the fountain in downtown balamb around noon or so.**

**quistis_trepe_14: The one wearing an elephant thong and a clown nose? Even my friend has more class than that.**

**3877SA: maybe i am that guy in the elephant thong and the clown nose. **

**quistis_trepe_14: All right; if you are, then answer me this, because it's always something that's bothered me-what in Hyne's name are you using to stuff the front of that thong, which is not exactly roomy yet appears as though it's holding an entire produce bin of melons?**

**3877SA: oh, that-actually, i'm just hung like a t-rexaur. **

**quistis_trepe_14: Mmm hmm. Favorite book?**

**3877SA: what, you're not even going to linger on that mental image?**

**quistis_trepe_14: I'd rather not linger on anything that involves that man and his choice of…apparel. Your favorite book? **

**3877SA: i don't read much.**

**quistis_trepe_14: All right. Favorite childhood toy?**

**3877SA: whatever someone else was playing with. **

**quistis_trepe_14: I grew up with someone like that. Favorite memory?**

**3877SA: let me ask you a question. what's the best thing that ever happened to you? **

**quistis_trepe_14: The best thing that ever happened to me?**

**3877SA: yeah. **

**quistis_trepe_14: When I was five my parents died in the First Sorceress War and I was sent to live in an orphanage in Centra.**

**3877SA: and the best thing that ever happened to you was…your parents dying?**

**quistis_trepe_14: You didn't let me finish. My parents' deaths were horrible, I'm sure-I can't really remember them now, which is a little sad in and of itself, I suppose-but that orphanage was really the only home I had except for Garden. One night, the other children and I all snuck out and set off fireworks on the beach and we stood there watching them all go off, and I can remember feeling…very happy. I can't remember my entire childhood there, but I remember being happy, more than anything. I remember feeling like that a lot and…I miss it sometimes. **

**quistis_trepe_14: I'm sorry. That was melancholy. The short of it is, the orphanage was the best thing that happened to me; I met some of the best people I've ever known there.**

**3877SA: wanna' hear a joke?**

**quistis_trepe_14: A joke?**

**3877SA: yeah, it's something people tell when they're fat and ugly and no one likes them so they try to be funny instead.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Are you trying to tell me that you are fat and ugly and friendless?**

**3877SA: what, you were expecting some kind of girly-faced, long-haired romance novel prick with his shirt blowing open in the wind? i'm sorry to disappoint, but i have nine eyes and a tail. why do you think i'm communicating with you over the internet?**

**quistis_trepe_14: A girl can always dream. So in my fantasies, you are still tall dark and extremely handsome, and you think I am the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.**

**3877SA: the last part's true, at least.**

**quistis_trepe_14: …Tell your joke. **

**3877SA: what, can't take a compliment? **

**quistis_trepe_14: I just…fine-thank you. **

**3877SA: don't people write sonnets to your eyes or something? i'd think you'd be used to this kinda' crap.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Extremely bad ones. Do you…really think I'm beautiful? **

**3877SA: yeah. your eyes are like really blue pools of blue and i want to swim in them until i drown in all their really pretty blue blueness. that sound about right?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Actually, it's better than some I've received, believe it or not. Your joke?**

**3877SA: really desperate to change the subject, huh? all right; knock knock.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Really?**

**3877SA: you're supposed to say 'who's there.'**

**quistis_trepe_14: Fine. Who's there?**

**3877SA: doris.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Oh Hyne. Doris who? **

**3877SA: doris locked, that's why i had to knock.**

**quistis_trepe_14: That was absolutely horrible.**

**3877SA: i know, but you just laughed anyway, didn't you?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Only because it was an alternative to hanging myself with my uniform tie. I have a worse one.**

**3877SA: you can't beat that one.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Knock knock.**

**3877SA: who's there?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Annie.**

**3877SA: annie who?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Annie body there?**

**3877SA: i just died a little inside. **

**quistis_trepe_14: I win, then?**

**3877SA: yeah, sure.**

**quistis_trepe_14: What do I win?**

**3877SA: the satisfaction of knowing that your jokes really, really suck.**

**quistis_trepe_14: What about a clue?**

**3877SA: hyne; not gonna' drop it, are you?**

**quistis_trepe_14: No.**

**3877SA: fine. you've known me for a while, but by a different name.**

**quistis_trepe_14: I don't even know your name now. I'm confused.**

**3877SA: it's a riddle. you're supposed to be confused. think about it tonight while you sleep. good night, quistis.**

* * *

><p>He kept looking at her-kept staring <em>through <em>her-because he had nothing else to look at in the warping reality making the world around him into something he didn't understand anymore. This woman that he loved, this woman that he would do anything for-burn everything for-this woman who was nothing less than the breath on his lips-

This woman was now just chess game pawn piece, unimportant bit player in the entire universe that collapsed and restructured and expanded itself to fit the new truth of him. It was a moment that encompassing, that _titanic_ and he put down his pen, feeling slack jaw line slowly trying to wind itself back up to where it was supposed to be.

Squall Leonhart, Commander Leonhart-Liberi Fatali, savior, orphan, the man blessed enough to hold Rinoa Heartilly's love the same way she bound up all of his in a stranglehold he could never break-

These were all the separate pieces of him, the puzzle parts of the identity that made him who he was, and they were nothing now. Inconsequential, and diminutive as the tiny ball his stopped heart made itself into.

Because none of them was as huge, as life-altering _universal _as this new identity she had just given him, this other person he did not even know.

Squall Leonhart was a father…_would be _a father.

Rinoa Heartilly was the unborn mother of his child.

_"Squall…I'm pregnant." _

He could still hear those words circling his head, prying at his brain, and now, as he sat there watching her, unblinking, his mouth still open, he noticed her trying not to cry.

"Rinoa-"

His chair flipped over when he stood up. "Rinoa, don't-"

"I'm sorry." She sniffed, wiping her nose. "I know you don't want this-I know it's not the right time, 'cause you're so busy all the time now-I just…" The look she gave him punched Squall in the chest. "Squall…do you still love me, you know…like before?"

"_What_?" He could not believe she had even asked that.

"I just feel like you've forgotten me, sometimes. You're always up here, and when I found out I was so scared, but you weren't-" Her voice hiccupped a little. "You weren't there, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

Three short strides took him out and around his desk, and then she was in his arms.

He kissed the top of her head. "Why…why would you even ask that?"

She clutched him by the shoulders, pressing her face into his chest. "I don't know. I just-you've got so much to do now and Garden is so important to you, and now I'm…a burden or something."

He had never even guessed she felt like this.

"Rinoa." He tipped her chin up with his fingers, giving her the smile that had only ever existed for her, the one he had never even known he had until she came into his life. "Don't ever ask that."

"Really?" Her face brightened a little.

"Yeah. It's stupid."

She pouted. "You're mean."

He tipped his forehead down to rest it against hers. "I wouldn't have to be if you didn't say dumb stuff like that."

"Squall…I'm scared. What do we do? Do you think…do you think they'll want to kill our baby?"

He would like to say no. He would like to reassure her of course not, who would murder some innocent little baby who has not even done anything, who has not even had the chance to live and laugh and love-

But he couldn't.

So he didn't; she'd know if he lied to her anyway.

"We'll figure something out, Rinoa."

Truthfully, he was scared shitless. It was not just Rinoa he could lose now, to the hungry lust of a crowd not even willing to give her a chance; now his son, his daughter-a piece of this woman he loved more than anything-

They were at risk, too.

And he suddenly realized, he had to stop being selfish.

But he couldn't tell her that either.

All he could do was stand there with his arms around her, letting her sniffle out the last of her grief against his chest, until his office went quiet around them, until his chest stopped hurting and just went numb.

All he could do, all he could stand to pretend, was that he hadn't just come to the decision he'd reached.

_Rinoa-_

He buried his face in her hair. _Rinoa I-_

He couldn't even say it to her internally, so he stopped trying, and just went on wordlessly holding her.

* * *

><p>He stopped by Quistis' dorm room later that evening, and found her at the desk beneath her window, typing briskly.<p>

She was smiling. He had not seen that for a while, and it softened the frozen blockade trapping his heart, just a little.

Squall peeked through the sliver of opening that had been left between her door and its frame, tapping softly.

Quistis' head shot up, and she quickly exited out of whatever she'd been doing.

"Squall! It's late-is something wrong?"

He cleared his throat, suddenly feeling awkward. He had never been to her room before; it looked exactly as he might have expected, crisp and tidy and as perfectly put-together as his old instructor always was.

"Uh…may I come in?"

She smiled and gestured to her bed, where he perched stiffly while she swung around in her computer chair to face him, poking at her glasses. "Do you need my help with something?"

He knotted his hands together on his lap, unsure how to begin. "I…uh…Rinoa told me. She said you were the one to take her to Dr. Kadowaki."

"Is she all right?" Quistis leaned forward with that concerned older sister look on her face and suddenly, abruptly, Squall wanted to cry.

He wanted to let Quistis play soothing older sibling role, wise matriarchal family figure, the kind who knew exactly what to say, the kind who knew exactly how to provide him with another answer, a different option-

But he didn't. He just went on looking down at his hands, seeing her out of blurred peripheral vision, broken up by the piece of hair that fell down over his eye.

Quistis could not fix this. It was not her _job _to fix this. It was his own responsibility, his own choice to make, and he could not lean on the woman he might have eventually loved if Rinoa hadn't made it through to his heart first.

"Uh…thanks. For…" He fluttered a hand like he could pick the words out of the air. "Being there for her. Whatever."

Quistis gave her patient, gentle smile, and Squall's chest tightened again. "She's my friend, Squall. I'm here for both of you, if you need me."

"That's…" He sighed out the breath that caught in his throat. "That's why I'm here."

When he finally looked up at her, there was more pain in his eyes than a single human being should ever have to endure. He could _feel _it, all pressing down on him like the avenging palm strike of Hyne, and he could see it reflected in the sudden flash of alarmed worry on her face.

"Squall, what-"

"Rinoa has to leave." he interrupted her, before he couldn't talk at all anymore. "And I can't."

Quistis crossed her legs, folding both hands over the arch of knee cap poking up through the unwrinkled black silk of the pajama bottoms she was wearing. He had not noticed them before, and he realized now that she had her hair pulled back from fresh-washed cheekbones in a low ponytail, the arch of her new scar ruining formerly perfect complexion with jagged dimples like pockmarks of teeth indentation.

He blinked. Squall had never seen her in such a casual environment, just a young woman ready for bed, and not the flawlessly prepared, unflinchingly punctual instructor he knew during the day, the steel-eyed mercenary strangling enemy throat with those soft hands tipped now in gleaming peach.

He liked her better this way. She worked too hard, stretched herself too thin, tried to be everywhere at once, available to any and all who needed her.

But he didn't say that, because _he _needed her, because without her, without capable supporter's hands and unmatched organizational skills and that eternal, encouraging smile, Garden would crumble around him the way the rest of his world kept trying to.

"Where would she go?" Quistis asked quietly, not arguing with him, just regarding him sympathetically behind those glasses that magnified everything, arc of long lash and compassionate drowning pools of blue, the ones trying to pull him under now when he needed every last fiber of restraint in his body, when he needed each final knife edge of cold clear reasoning-

When what he wanted, all he could really use right now, was to lay his head down on her knee like a child, let her stroke his hair, allow her to take care of everything-

To sit and watch, while she made it all go away.

But she couldn't do that. _He _couldn't do that, make her take on this millstone around his neck, this life-shifting decision Squall still wasn't sure he could go through with.

"I was thinking…she could stay with Raijin and Fuijin."

Quistis frowned. "I don't think anyone knows exactly where they are. I heard they were staying somewhere remote, lying low, but I don't know which town. I think that's the point."

"Seifer might know." Squall pointed out quietly.

"He might." Quistis agreed. "That doesn't mean he'll help."

He stared her dead in the eyes. "He will, if you ask him."

She frowned again. "I don't know why you think he'll listen to me-it's not like he was ever very good at that when he was my student."

It wasn't his place to let Seifer's feelings slip regardless of the way he personally felt about the asshole, so instead he pasted what he hoped was a bland look on his face, careful not to let anything through into his voice. "He'll listen to you before he'll give anything I say a chance."

"True." She looked down at her hands for a moment, gathering her thoughts perhaps, and then she glanced back up at him. "Are you sure about this, Squall?"

"She can't stay here." _Rinoa-I'm so sorry. _"It's not safe-we still haven't found the cadets Irvine overheard, and they'll never-" He had to catch his breath again. "They'll never let her keep it. No one wants a sorceress baby in this world." Squall finished softly, looking down because he could feel his face crumpling, giving way around his scar, and he couldn't meet her eyes again for a long, long time.

She sighed. "I know. I know this is best, but-" She gave him that I'm-here-if-you-need-me look again, and it killed him inside. "You won't be there to protect her. I think Raijin and Fujin will be willing to help-they're not bad people, they were just mis-led during the war, and they chose a bad outlet for their loyalty. But Squall…can you really handle not being there?"

He would have to.

He nodded succinctly. "I…think so." He didn't think that at all, but what else could he say? He could not just leave Garden behind, not when Cid had placed it entirely in his hands, not when hundreds of people all relied on him to be a leader, to be _their _leader-

Not when he could do more good here, using his influence and his contacts and his father's political sway to make the world a safer place for her.

It still didn't hurt any less.

Quistis shifted in her chair. "If we find them…I'll take her there personally myself."

He nodded again, because he knew he could not speak now-the bulge in his throat was too big, too solid, and he could barely even mumble around it, he could barely _breathe _around it-

And when she smiled quietly, knowingly again, he could only sit there blinking, gazing down at that jumble of finger joint and fray of half-detached hang nail like it could give him some other way out of all this.

_Rinoa-  
><em>

_Rinoa, I'm sorry. I love you. I can't say it aloud very well, but you're the best thing that's ever, ever happened to me. I want us to be together until we're old, and gray, and I want us-_

_I want us to have a whole life together, you know? _

_So we'll be together again. I promise. I promised you a long time ago, didn't I? And I showed up. I was there. I always will be, I just-_

_I need you to believe that, ok? I need you to believe that we'll be together-_

I _need-_

_I _need _to believe that. _


	11. Chapter 9

**A/N: Big thanks to those of you who have reviewed so far; I have a pretty serious review addiction you should feel free to feed anytime. I'm really glad you guys seem to think I'm doing a good job with characterization-I have a confession to make that's probably almost sacrilegious for someone who is crazy enough about the FFVIII storyline and characters to have cranked out over 100,000 words of a fanfic in a little over two months: I've only played the game once. Years ago. Needless to say, it's been interesting trying to piece everything together in my head through YT walkthroughs I recently found and my own pitiful memory. I have a blast writing bloody fight scenes, because I'm a sicko like that, but at the end of the day, what I want is for you guys to walk away from this giving a shit about the characters. You can have an awesome plot, amazing action sequences-and totally bland, cardboard characters no one gives a rat's ass about, and then what's the point? Also, Angie, I was very pleased to see you mention that the plot was engaging. I've been a little worried I'm dragging things out too much; I want all of this to unfold a little at a time, but I was worried you guys might be getting bored, so a huge thanks for that comment. And now, on to a chapter that is almost as long as this author's note. **

**Chapter Nine**

Balamb Garden

Balamb

**3877SA: what are you wearing?**

**quistis_trepe_14: If this is how your normally romance women, I'm not surprised you have to resort to approaching them over the internet.**

**3877SA: come on. just answer the question. **

**quistis_trepe_14: Absolutely not.**

**3877SA: tell you what i'm wearing. **

**quistis_trepe_14: I'm not sure I want to know.**

**quistis_trepe_14: If you say 'nothing but a smile' I'm logging off.**

**3877SA: i was going to say i got all suited up for you baby-but if you're going to be like that, fine.**

**quistis_trepe_14: I assume that's a not very clever way of implying that you are referencing your birthday suit.**

**3877SA: pfft. suck all the fun out of a guy's day. **

**3877SA: what's your idea of a perfect date?**

**quistis_trepe_14: A perfect date? Hmmm…I suppose I haven't thought about it much before. I've really only done the generic dinner and flowers sort of thing-nice, but a little boring.**

**3877SA: maybe you're not doing it with the right person.**

**quistis_trepe_14: I can't argue with that.**

**3877SA: so what's the kind of date you would want to go on then?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Something on the beach. I love the beach.**

**3877SA: fireworks on the beach. lighting up the sky behind a tall dark and handsome man.**

**quistis_trepe_14: I think I would like that very much. Maybe…we should do that one day? **

**3877SA: i don't think you'd like me in real life. i have nine eyes and a tail, remember?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Yes, but remember that I have decided you are tall dark and handsome, and that's how you're going to stay in my mind. **

**quistis_trepe_14: Can I have another clue?**

**3877SA: what's black and yellow and cries like a baby? **

**quistis_trepe_14: Another riddle?**

**3877SA: it's something i used to come across a lot as a kid. **

**quistis_trepe_14: And it gives me a clue to your identity how?**

**3877SA: maybe i'll tell you one day.**

* * *

><p>Quistis stabbed her fork through a piece of wilted lettuce, and spent a moment studying it before cautiously sliding it inside her mouth.<p>

The cafeteria had utterly saturated it in dressing once again, just as she'd suspected; eating it was a little akin to chewing on seaweed that had fallen prey to a tragic accident with an oil tanker, but she got it down somehow, trying to concentrate on the taste and not the texture.

Not much help there. Its flavor-a little like she imagined the way one of Zell's shoes must taste after a sockless three hour long training session- was hardly any better, if not a little worse.

She took three more bites and then gave up, sliding it away from her across Dr. Kadowaki's crowded desk. Beside her, Zell slurred out what she thought was an inquiry into whether Quistis was going to eat it or not, and then he claimed it for himself, shoveling pieces of it down between bites of grilled cheese.

Kadowaki was studying him with a sort of horrified fascination, and Quistis stifled a laugh.

Thirty years in the medical field-treating soldiers, no less, who came in with all manner of horrific wounds-and she still was not prepared for the dietary habits of Zell Dincht.

She blinked and recovered; the older woman was nothing if not hardy.

"So, Ms. Trepe, any idea who this mysterious internet admirer is?"

She felt her cheeks go nuclear. "Zell! I told you not to mention that to anyone."

He opened his eyes wide in an attempt at innocence she did not believe for a moment, shrugging exaggeratedly with both hands in the air.

"Oh, who do you think I'm going to tell? I think it's nice. You could use something in your life that isn't your job."

Quistis buried her chin in her hands, partially eclipsing her mouth. "I think everyone is overly concerned with my love life."

"'Cept you." Zell pointed out. "Come on, Quisty-this beautiful young lady is right. You need something else to think about, you know?"

Kadowaki shook her finger playfully at him. "Don't think flattery is going to get you out of helping me organize medical charts this afternoon."

"Ahh, come on-I entered the Triple Triad tournament and my round's in an hour; what's it gonna' do for my reputation if I wuss out?"

"I didn't think there _was _any way to damage your reputation." He was an atrocious card player, though an undeniably enthusiastic one.

"You should enter, Quisty; you'd wipe the floor with everyone!"

"I can't; I only have another hour or so before I have to meet up with Irvine. We have a mission this afternoon, a security detail at Balamb Hotel. It shouldn't take long, but unless someone could shuffle my name to the back, I don't think I'll be able to make it back in time." She heard the note of wistfulness in her own voice, and cradled her cheek in one hand. It had been a long time since she had the kind of idle free time she would need to brush off her long unused deck, sitting forlornly on one of her shelves collecting dust. A shame too, because her legendary Triple Triad skills had humbled more than a few cocky young cadets who had somehow gotten it into their heads that card shark proficiency was limited only to those in possession of a y chromosome.

Seifer had been one of them, if she recalled. He had sat there staring down at his cards for several long moments, as though he could simply not believe he had just lost-to a _girl _of all people, horrors-and then he'd swept his hand across the cafeteria table cordoned off for the final round in the tournament that had been an annual occurrence since Quistis was fifteen, scattering cards like throwing knives.

Which had probably been exactly what he'd wished they were.

She heard the door open behind her, and Kadowaki's face creased in a scowl as she glanced up over Quistis' shoulder. "What are you doing back here already, young man?"

"Training accident." Quistis heard from behind her, and she felt her shoulders tense.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

"Oh Hyne-were you fighting with Squall again?"

"What am I, six?" Seifer snapped.

"If I remember correctly, you were twenty the last time you were in here after another of your face-offs. You would think he would have better things to do than indulge in a pissing match with someone as stupid on testosterone as he is."

"I was fighting a T-Rexaur, for your information. I ripped my stitches."

"Again? They'll never heal if you keep doing that." She stood up-something that was becoming increasingly difficult for her, Quistis noticed with a frown-and stiff-legged it over to her patient, keeping ahold of her desk with one hand until she ran out of smooth-sanded edge and had to hold herself up on her own. "Well, get over on the table."

She watched him obey with a grimace, the lightweight gray t-shirt he had on spattered with the abstract artwork pattern of monster blood he wore across the fluttering slit a wayward claw had ripped open along the side of his abdominal muscles.

"Shirt off, Almasy. And next time, pick on something your own size. You do understand one of those could eat you whole and still need a light snack?"

"I killed it." he protested, gripping the edge of the exam table with his scarred hands and ignoring Quistis and Zell.

"Shirt off." Kadowaki demanded again, picking up a clipboard that she penned a couple of tidy little notes across before looking back up at him. "Stop your lipping off."

He made a face but did as she said, peeling the ruined piece of material up over his head, his body giving a little reflexive twitch as the infirmary's cool atmosphere hit his bare torso.

Well. At least she didn't have to wonder what was under that trench coat anymore.

She had seen Squall with his shirt off once, when she'd walked unannounced into his office at the wrong moment, interrupting a torrid moment being enthusiastically carried out on top of Squall's desk-a memory that still made her burn with humiliation when she thought of it.

Seifer's body was nothing like his. Squall had been long and lean and toned, just the way she had sometimes allowed herself to imagine him during the long span of years when she had believed herself to be in love with him, well-maintained but slight.

Seifer's stomach sloped in knots of muscle you could break a two by four on, the insides of his biceps showing faint blue with the pale tracery of veins she could see through layers of sinew like steel. It was a magazine model body, perfectly proportioned and without an ounce of fat, and when he looked up suddenly and caught her eye, Quistis noticed she was spending far too much time lingering on it.

She turned away with cheeks she knew must be bright red.

"Like what you see, Trepe?"

She smiled thinly. "Only until you opened your mouth."

"So Almasy, we were just talking about this dude who's been e-mailin' Quisty love poetry and stuff."

"_Zell_."

Seifer was glaring very menacingly at her friend, who had the kind of grin on his face she had often heard Irvine describe as 'shit-eating.' His expression barely even shifted when Kadowaki dabbed anesthetic across his back, which was an achievement in itself-she'd felt the acid smart of it a time or two herself, and a part of her was a little impressed that he took it with hardly a tightening around the eyes. "Yeah? What kind of jackass does that?"

"He is _not _a jackass."

"Quisty's sorta' got a little crush on him." Zell said helpfully, still smiling.

She wished someone would let her in on the joke.

Seifer looked almost interested now. He snuck another glance at her, the smirk that flattened his lips at least drawing her attention away from his naked chest, where her traitorous eyes kept wanting to return. "Really?"

"No." She covered her eyes with one hand. Next year her birthday present to Zell was going to be a gag. "It's nothing."

"Yeah, well, your face is an interesting color for it to be 'nothing.' What's he do-write sonnets to your eyes or something?"

That was a little odd-her clandestine correspondant had used the exact same wording.

"Nah. She was talkin' about this date he described, how it was, like, her idea of a perfect night-"

"Stop teasing the poor woman." Kadowaki scolded. "He sounds like a lovely young man. And if a _certain someone _isn't going to make a move anyway, there's no reason this boy shouldn't get his chance."

Zell began to laugh.

Quistis stood up, her face still warm. "I'm leaving. I'm going to be late meeting Irvine if I stay too much longer." She made for the door a little more quickly than was perhaps necessary, and as it slipped shut behind her, she could hear Dr. Kadowaki demanding to know what Zell was cackling on about.

* * *

><p>His thumb twitched, and coin bright as a streak of shooting star spiraled upward.<p>

He caught it neatly, slid his nail beneath it, and flipped it again.

Across the hallway, Quistis watched it arc upward, tracked it as it corkscrewed back down, and then her eyes went back into their vigilant scan, her lips pressed tightly together.

He waited until her eyes trailed back around to him, and then he walked the coin along his wrist, and with a flick that was just a lightning arch of blurred skin tone, Irvine spun it back up into the air; he swept his hat off in a flourish of over-the-top gesture that took him into a stately bow, keeping his head down and his smile aimed at the floor as the piece of currency landed neatly inside his waiting hat.

"Irvine." she scolded, and he glanced up in time to see Quistis' arms go up, forming a barrier across her chest that wasn't nearly as ominous as she had most likely intended it to be. The smile that kept trying to break free across her lips ruined that stern teacher's impression she kept trying to maintain, and he winked as he re-settled the brim of his cowboy hat just where he liked it.

"Yes, darlin'?"

She just shook her head and looked away.

He slid back down the wall behind him, easing himself all the way to the floor, where he sat with his long legs tucked up to his chin, Exeter across both knees.

This was not the peachiest of assignments he'd had lately, for sure. Private security was usually kind of a crap job anyway, far more boring than most action movies implied, filled with the kind of long waits and cramping legs-and, in this case, noisy sex moans of peaking copulation-they endured now. Squall had originally intended to hand the assignment off to some of the newer SeeDs, but their client's repeated and insistent demands that he get only the best and most experienced Garden had to offer eventually culminated in an agreement to hire out two of the Liberi Fatali themselves, if only to shut the guy up.

Kade Myron was an aid to President Lagoire himself, the kind of balding, middle-aged politician who'd spent his whole career not making much of himself; Irvine had always suspected Laguna had elevated him to his current position out of pity and not because he actually listened to any of the man's advice, but Kade, officious, over-inflated self-important Kade, apparently did not see it that way.

Twenty years spent in the backstabbing, shark-circling climate that was government had given him a healthy dose of paranoia, and so during the bi-annual vacations he took to the sleepy tourist attraction Balamb had made itself into over the last few years, he insisted on being vigilantly guarded while he 'went fishing.' Not that Irvine was particularly fond of the activity or could claim much knowledge of it, but he was relatively certain that 'going fishing' did not involve banging a hooker named LuLu while pointedly ignoring the increasingly irate phone calls of a suspicious wife.

He snuck a glance at Quistis, still maintaining her alertness with impressive professionalism while the faked orgasm scream of weary prostitute shuddered through the door and out into the hall they watched, etching just a slight web of wrinkles like age lines around her eyes.

She looked nice today, Irvine observed, her hair clipped up into its usual out-of-the-way fishtail but her eyes subtly lined in makeup she did not normally wear, her lips done up in a mirror glass finish of rose.

He wondered what had brought that on. Dincht had let him in yesterday on the fact that she'd been talking to that guy sending her the poetry he had stumbled across-maybe if was this unknown admirer who'd brought on the extra effort she didn't really need to put in.

A part of him hoped so. She spent too much time by herself, buried in her work and her books, hiding behind layers of official paperwork and the fictitious worlds she immersed herself in to avoid facing the reality she was tired of waking up to each morning.

It was amazing, the things you could see behind just an arch of felted hat brim, the divisionary line between him and the rest of the world, a populace that somehow did not notice that just because he kept that curve of distinctive headpiece pulled down low over his eyes more often than not, it did not mean he wasn't still there.

It did not mean he didn't _see_, and what he was seeing from her more and more often, was distant gaze and distracted replies and the increasingly rare lip twitches of her beautiful smiles.

What he saw was his friend out for the morning run that used to be just a way to sneak in an hour of vigorous exercise before the rest of her busy day, using that time now to flee the lingering demons he knew were chasing her.

"Get off me, you stupid cunt!" Kade's voice snarled behind the locked door to Irvine's left, and he was on his feet in an instant, Exeter swinging out in a wide arc like the duster that spun with him, his leg extended in a hip thrust of front kick that smashed the door open before their charge could even finish the rest of his epitaph.

He burst inside with Quistis just a step behind him, to the pale half-moon glow of an ass he really did not want to look at, and the telltale wink of silver that made him drop Exeter and lunge. He couldn't get a shot off at this range without risking Kade, but Garden had not neglected their education on the fine art of hand to hand.

Irvine executed a tidy shoulder throw that slammed the woman down hard; she kept hold of the knife somehow, and when she rolled back to both feet, he saw it flash in a blow like gray lightning strike.

Ah _shit_-

He slipped into a whirl of blinding dodge that took him past her, forcing her into an overextension that gave him the opening Irvine needed, and when she swung around toward him now, he buried a fist in her ribs, hard enough to discourage but not to break.

And then, faster than he could blink, Quistis had her by the snarl of long black hair that looked as though it hadn't been washed in quite some time, and she smashed the woman's head into the corner of polished bedpost that split her scalp like a knife, once and then again until she dropped her weapon with a sharp cry.

"He wouldn't pay me my money!" she screamed, huddling at Quistis' feet. "He wouldn't pay me my goddamned fucking money!"

"Well, ma'am, that doesn't mean you can stab him." Irvine said, shouldering Exeter.

"Fuck you!" she sobbed.

Quistis, not looking terribly sympathetic, pulled the woman to her feet and handed her the scrap of cloth that Irvine guessed was supposed to be some sort of dress, though it looked more like a postage stamp to him.

He wondered if he could talk Selphie into something like that.

Probably not.

She tossed Kade's suit briskly across the bed to him, keeping an eye on the hunched-over pile of humanity that might have once been a very pretty young lady, but was now just a broken assortment of loose flab rolls and the folds of old woman wrinkle riding thirty-something skin like it belonged there.

"Give me my money, Kade, you prick." she hissed.

Quistis yanked away the pants he had just fished out of the pile of custom-tailored cloth she'd handed to him, and produced his wallet from the back pocket.

"Hey!"

Wordlessly, she counted out several pieces of gil, and presented them to the prostitute wriggling into her postage stamp of an outfit, wiping the nose Irvine now noticed dripped a thin trickle of powdery white.

This was all way too damn undignified for him, and Quistis sure as shit was far too good to be here in this cluttered room that reeked of blood and sek, overpowering the vanilla air freshner hotel maids had plugged into the far wall outlet.

It was no wonder her happiness flaked away like old scar tissue if you picked too closely at it, he thought.

"This isn't enough." the woman snapped.

"It's gonna' have ta' be." Irvine said firmly, taking her by the arm. "Ya' just tried to stab our client here, so count yourself lucky that you're gettin' anything at all, _ma'am_. Don'tcha think stabbing customers is probably bad for business?"

"Not if they're not paying in the first place." she spat, letting him escort her to the door before she pulled her arm away. "Hope you get crabs, faggot!"

He watched her stalk off down the hallway, shaking his head.

Inside, Quistis was disposing of the knife, handling it with just the tips of her fingers, as cautious as though she were defusing a bomb packing enough C4 to level the entire world.

Couldn't say he blamed her. Who knew what that handle crawled with?

Beside her, Kade finished dressing himself, and launched into a prolific monologue that highlighted all the different ways they were absolutely worthless-Quistis in particular, which was exactly why Garden never should have begun accepting applications from women, according to him-and Irvine watched her eye the knife she had just dropped into plastic-lined waste bin like she was thinking about using it.

"Well, sir, not to contradict a man of your esteem, but if not for Ms. Trepe here, you'd probably be dead, and then we'd have to explain to your wife how you turned up dead in a hotel room with a hooker snorting cocaine off your corpse." He didn't think the idiot even noticed the disdain that dripped completely naked and unconcealed from his voice.

"Your contract stipulates that our services are required only until your…liaison is over." Quistis informed him.

In other words: see ya' later, douche bag, and don't let the hooker stab you on your way out.

Or do.

Irvine shut the door on yet another of Kade's loud complaints. "Well, Quisty, pleasure as always bein' with you."

She just gave him a look.

He smiled playfully and slung a long arm across shoulders he worriedly noticed were thinner than the last time he had done just this, keeping pace with the monotone _clack clack clack _of those boots that were starting to show the white of inevitable erosion that meant she would need to replace them soon. "You up for some lunch, darlin'? On me."

She sighed, and he felt it shift his arm. "Considering just how long it's been since I've had something that wasn't cafeteria food, yes please."

"Well, the sky's the limit, Quisty. I don't want you gettin' some puny little rabbit food, all right?"

He could see the faint arch of her smile out of the corner of one eye. "Of course. Seven courses of filet mignon and poached salmon and as many dessert samplers as I can handle."

"Nothin' else will do." Irvine agreed, leading her out into the sunlight.

* * *

><p>He was wearing just loose draw-string sweatpants and nothing else, the angled jut of his slender hips peeking out over the top of them.<p>

In a former life, Quistis must have been something truly horrible-a murderer or a telemarketer-because it was becoming increasingly clear to her that Hyne kept trying to punish her. What other explanation was there for another half-naked appearance by Seifer Almasy, when she was still trying to burn the memory of the last one from her brain?

A pleasant lunch with Irvine that had made her laugh more than she could remember doing so in a long, long time ended when she recalled the favor Squall had asked of her, the one that required what he would no doubt turn into something very unpleasant before it was all over. It was all really very simple: she asked him if he knew where his old posse had disappeared to, he answered either affirmatively or negatively, with nods or head shakes if he preferred to say nothing at all, and then she could go on with her day, the rest of which would hopefully prove to be Seifer-free.

Seifer, however, made sure nothing was easy so long as it involved him, and Quistis knew this would be no different.

He squinted down at her through what looked to be a few layers of not-quite-dissolved sleep, rubbing his eyes. "Trepe? What do you want?"

"I had a favor to ask of you, but if you're busy-"

"I was sleeping."

"It's barely 4:00."

"I can't take a fuckin' nap?" he snapped.

"Maybe you should have taken a longer one."

Seifer smirked and nudged his door open slightly. "You wanna' join me?"

Quistis rolled her eyes as she brushed past him. It was probably best to get this over with quickly, lest she lose her instructor's license again, this time for murdering a fellow SeeD in cold blood. Though considering just who the SeeD in question was, she was not all that certain Squall would yank her license.

He might give her a raise.

Seifer closed the door behind her, and then suddenly he was diving, thrusting her rudely aside as he leapt, the neat martial arts roll he went into carrying him across his bed and to the nightstand beside it, where he made a lightning strike of a grab, sweeping both hands around behind his back.

She could still feel her mouth hanging partially open. "What was _that_?"

"Porn. The really bad stuff. I wasn't sure you could handle it, Instructor."

"I didn't realize they had started binding men's magazines in hardback."

"It's kind of a new thing-absorbs liquids better."

"That's disgusting."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm a fuckin' pig. What'd you want?" She noticed he was careful to not let his hands drift back out from where he had tucked them as he opened the top drawer of his nightstand, turning himself so his body blocked whatever it was he deposited in there.

He bumped it closed with a hip and then leaned against it, crossing his arms.

"What was that?"

"What?"

"The book. Why are you hiding it from me?"

"I told you it was porn."

"Seifer I am not an idiot-it was a book. One I assume you're not supposed to have. What is it?"

"Nothing. A man can't satisfy his fucking needs without you crawling all up their ass?"

"Show it to me."

"Come get it if you want it that bad."

She took a step toward him, hoping he would not call what was painfully obviously a bluff-one-hundred-twenty-five pounds of unarmed female against one-hundred-and-eighty-pounds of solid muscle was not a situation a careful tactician such as herself favored; honestly, what was she going to do, give him a stern look and hope he slunk shame-faced out of her way?

He straightened up with that infuriating smirk back on his face, apparently arriving at the same conclusion.

Quistis stomped down hard on his bare foot, getting the heel of her boot down between the fine bones there, striking just firmly enough to cause physical pain without real damage, and as he bent at the waist, blurting out something Cid had once washed his mouth out with soap for saying in front of Matron, she darted around him.

His hand flashed out, and then he had her by the elbow.

The sudden interruption in her momentum pitched Quistis awkwardly sideways-helped along by the side thrust of the hip he got into her ribcage-and she landed across his bed, tangled up with something that bound her legs up like a yard of kidnapper's rope.

The world became callused warrior's hands and the wet shine gleam of sweating torso-

And lips half an inch away from hers, close enough to brush if she moved her head just the inconsequential fraction of centimeter that was the only distance left between them.

He had become a statue above her. It was a fitting description-she could certainly imagine sculptors vying among themselves for the opportunity to model their latest masterpiece after his flawlessly-shaped body-

_Hyne. _What was _wrong _with her?

Part of Quistis rushed to reassure her cringing brain. Finding Seifer physically attractive was nothing unusual or even new for her-she had always considered him very striking, just in the benign sort of observational way one makes the same sort of assessment about a good friend, or a family member. Not that she considered him either one-it was just that Seifer's attractiveness had always been overshadowed by his ego and his penchant for disrupting her classes, and she had never really viewed him as a man, as someone who was not her off-limits student that she would not deign to touch with a ten foot pole anyway.

Before, she had always suspected he felt exactly the same way as her, but now-

Now something she did not want to see flashed in his eyes, and Quistis buried her suspicions under layers of forced ignorance before they could be fully realized.

He smiled, and that coil of warm mouth skin grazed the corner of hers, very lightly.

"You know, Instructor, I've thought a lot about what it would be like to have you in my bed. I mean, you always had a lot less clothing on, but this is pretty good too." Every word brushed sensual lip corner along the edge of hers, and oh Hyne Hyne _Hyne _this was so very disturbing-

This was borderline revolting, and when the part of her that was not entirely focused on those knowledgeable lips suddenly became aware that Seifer-or at least parts of him-was very interested in how she felt pressed up against him, Quistis twitched underneath him with a startled little yelp.

Which probably did not help.

And neither did the corner of her mind whispering fantasies, spinning scenarios she did not want to picture right now, persuading her in its glib serpent's tongue that this was not revolting at all, this was warm and nice and though perhaps not world-shattering-

This was also not the unenthused limpness she had gone into under the last man she had lain beneath this way, the overeager date she had let kiss her neck and unbutton her shirt and fumble at her pants, until Quistis accepted that she could not even begin to fake any sort of interest in what he wanted, and pushed him away.

She shoved frantically at his shoulders.

He pushed himself off far more quickly than she'd expected, and when Seifer stood up, combing his fingers back through his hair, Quistis could see a faint tinge of red eating through into the uppermost epidermis layer of his cheeks.

It was the same flush she could feel crawling up her face like surging firestorm, and Quistis fussed with her clothes for an unnecessary length of time while she composed herself.

"So what the hell'd you want?" he demanded, not looking at her as he crossed his arms.

"Do you know where Raijin and Fujin are?"

"Huh?" He did look at her now, the brief embarrassment she still could not quite believe she'd seen gone in place of the forehead crinkle of his bewilderment.

"I just assumed that you might know what happened to them."

"Why?"

"I'm not at liberty to say."

"Then I'm not at liberty to tell you anything I might or might not know."

She pressed her fingers into her temples with a weary sigh. "Seifer, please. It's important. If you know where they've gone, I need you to tell me."

"I don't know."

"Seifer-I am _asking _you to please tell me where they are living now." She did not have the patience for this; she had not slept well the night before and all the coffee in Garden would not be enough to sate this run-down inertia she wore like cheap perfume, over-heavy and too-persistent, dragging at her heels like the prison shackles he had worn the first and only time she had bothered to visit her old student.

_-i'm just fine instructor and how are you get your license back yet-_

"I don't _know _where the fuck they are. The Posse's no more, if you haven't noticed. You see them sending me fuckin' birthday presents and calling to tell me how their day was?"

"Fine."

He followed her to the door. "Pleasure doing business with you as always, Instructor."

Quistis let it slam in his face.

* * *

><p>The train Quistis took the next morning to the childhood home she had gone far too long without visiting vibrated the book she had spent most of the trip reading between her hands, and sloshed a fountain spurt of coffee from the Styrofoam cup tucked into the tray in front of her.<p>

It hit her knee with a noisy splash, and ate through to the skin beneath like acid.

She sighed.

A particularly violent spray ruined the corner of her book, and, irritated, she set it aside on the empty seat next to her, striations of water damage brown running in smears of destroyed watercolor down the cover.

It was Selphie's favorite book; she'd have to replace it now. Why her friend enjoyed it so immensely she hadn't a clue, but Selphie had only loaned it to her on threat of horrible, drawn-out death should anything happen to it. The writing was awful, the prose akin to something like the poetry lovesick Trepies left behind on her desk, and quite frankly the author had so poorly characterized her protagnists that Quistis found herself not caring if their next unrealistic adventure left them dying in one another's arms.

At least the book would be over.

Outside, the melded-together blur of tree and pasture and occasional building spire the world made itself into passed in an eye blink of moment, blurring into the incomprehensible fuzz of Technicolor Time Compression.

If she stared at it for long enough, even the colors ran together, until green and gray and pending storm charcoal became all mixed up, all merged into a smear of sepia like ancient wartime photograph.

If she looked just long enough, just hard enough, Quistis could see the darker monochrome of dying student blood spray, making lines like fresh-cut veins down her arms, her fingers-

She blinked.

Her coffee cup was empty now.

She did not have the energy to unbelt herself and walk the length of two cars for another.

With a sigh, she picked up Selphie's book again, flicking latte from its cover, trying to blot as much off with her sleeve as she could; she was mostly just successful in spreading it even more thoroughly across previously dry spots, so at length she gave up and flipped it open again.

Someone's hand extended down into her line of vision, holding a cup like the one she had just spent several moments mournfully studying, and she followed a line of scar-etched arm up to the narcissistic smile of its owner.

Dread like a boulder hit her stomach, and she resisted the urge to calmly slide the window open and hurl herself out onto the tracks below.

At least it would be a quick death.

"Seifer, what are you doing here?"

He wasn't wearing his coat today; this morning had been unseasonably warm, and she had donned just a light jacket herself over the civilian casual slacks and scoop necked shirt she wore.

He had not, however, left Hyperion at home, she noticed. He probably slept with it death gripped in one hand.

"You looked pissy. I figured you could use this."

"How kind of you." She took it with a frown, peeking cautiously down over pebbled white rim into the drink beyond, black as starless night and scented just right, without a hint of cream or artificial sweetener. "I assume it's poisoned?"

He took the aisle seat next to her, slouching down into it and putting his boots up on the chair back in front of him.

She re-thought her instinct to demand he put them back down; it would probably only result in the same refusual she'd encountered every time Quistis had issued the same command in class, which was to say an infuriating smirk and not even a twitch from the offending boots that he did not drop until she finally lost her temper and came by to upend them herself with a loud smack.

And then, somehow, he had still won, still emerged victorious with that Hyne damned smile on his face, leaving her to slink off back to her desk with humilation burning two bright clown circles of red into her cheeks.

No, she would let the boots slide this time.

Quistis took a tentative sip of her coffee, watching him out of the corner of one eye.

"How did you know I liked it black?" she asked as she lowered it, holding it steady on her lap as the train jolted again beneath them.

"Well," he said thoughtfully, running his finger down the old-healed streak of damaged skin the same way she had seen Squall do sometimes, "I just figured you had such a stick up your ass about everything that there was no way you'd remove it enough to do something a normal person would, such as add a little sugar or cream to your coffee. Plus, black coffee tastes like ass, and I figured as many times as you chewed mine during our time together you were sorta' into that."

She didn't know why she bothered to sometimes treat him as a human being with the kind of conversational skills that would allow him to make pleasant small talk. Clearly, there was no switch you could flip inside Seifer Almasy that would render him appropriate to take out into public, though Hyne knew she had searched for it during the long years spent trying to get him to pay attention in class.

"Why are you following me?"

"'Cause I want to know what the fuck you're doing trying to find Raj and Fu. Garden needs to leave them the fuck alone; they got suckered into what they did during the war. They never wanted to hurt anyone."

"It has nothing to do with that."

"Then what?" he demanded.

"It's personal."

"Who the fuck am I going to tell? My fan club? The one that used to picket outside my jail cell screaming bad rhymes about cutting my head off?"

"Zell, for one." Quistis took another sip. "The two of you seem to be disturbingly chummy lately. He can't keep his mouth shut to save his life, which is why he's not with me today."

"I'm not going to say anything to Wuss, for fuck's sake. You think we have slumber parties where we catch up on all the latest Garden gossip and braid each other's hair or something?"

She smiled at that mental image.

"Did I imagine that, or did something I just say make you smile?"

"Clearly it was a figment of your imagination; most of my interactions with you leave me with the urge to take up drinking."

He let silence fall between them, which was somewhat odd for a man who seemed to always need to get the last word in. Maybe he'd slept as poorly as she had last night; Dr. Kadowaki had hinted after all that Seifer was not nearly as blasé about the war as he always appeared to be.

Maybe he wrenched himself free of dreams where mothers played and drowned and throat-slit innocent children the same way she did, with the nervous system short-out twitch of the kick that peeled back all her covers, and left her shivering in pre-dawn chill like the ocean wave that had nearly killed her when she was seven.

Maybe he wished there was someone there to hold him after it was all over, after sheets soaked in sweat like fatal bleed-out had to be stripped and laundered and replaced, after there was nothing left to do but get back into bed, and hope slumber brought just black hole nothingness this time.

Maybe he cried himself to sleep the way she tried not to, the way warriors and mercenaries and calm, collected instructors were not supposed to do-

And maybe he was simply the conceited jerk she had always pegged him for, selfish show-off who did not care that his mother was dead, as long as it was not him.

She tried not to picture him on his knees in front of the dangling necklace strands of vein that kept Matron's head still attached to her body even as it sagged forward unnaturally onto her chest, screaming and weeping and struggling like he wanted to throw himself under the next down sweep of axe swing that would take him with her.

Ellone had been the only one who bothered to comfort him.

Quistis still felt a pang of guilt like knife blade through her gut at that. But how did she touch that sort of pain? How did she even begin to try and make everything ok, when there was a part of her that wanted to join him, when there was a miserable, aching piece of Quistis Trepe that she hid under so many stratums of flimsy personality trait she often did not notice it herself? Serene, graceful older sister Quistis, perfect, methodical Instructor Quistis-these were the versions of herself she strived for, all the layers of the woman she was supposed to be, the woman she _needed _to be, for herself and for everyone else.

The cowering little child who whimpered herself to sleep was not that woman, and so the next morning she simply did not acknowledge her, going about her day like she had fallen asleep just like everyone else, into a normal slumber that left her rejuvenated and ready to face the world.

Into sleep that did not wear her mother's face like a horror movie caricature of the woman she used to know.

The overhead PA came on with a soft ding to announce the next stop, a half hour layover in Deling City that would give her just enough time to find a bookstore where she could purchase another copy of the novel she had ruined earlier.

Beside her, Seifer combed his fingers back through his hair again, and before Quistis could stop herself, she reached up to touch it.

He gave her a look like she'd just stripped off all her clothes and begun to dance in the middle of the aisle, and she pulled her hand back. "I'm just surprised you've let it get so long."

"It's fuckin' annoying."

"Then cut it."

Seifer shrugged. "Haven't gotten around to it."

Quistis finished her coffee and gathered her coat into her lap as the train began to gradually slow. "Then I suggest you stop complaining about it."

His mouth twitched. "You're still as fuckin' bossy now as you were when you were six."

She had always picked the same boy to boss around back then, too, and it had always worked just as well as it did now.

They studied one another from the corners of their eyes.

Neither one of them had changed all that much, Quistis reflected. Brash and loud and bucking authority-all the pieces of the little boy that used to chase her down Matron's beach were still there, packaged now in the all-grown-up arrogance of the man sitting beside her with that hint of I-know-something-you-don't-know smile he had perfected a long time ago.

And she-

She had hardly evolved herself, arranging the entire world around her in the neat stacks and arcs and crisp-ironed sleeve cuffs of the order she needed, the standard issue, military regulation structure that was the only thing holding her together.

It was the same way she had survived her parents' deaths, methodically color-coordinating all her toys while Matron tried to get Quistis to talk about her feelings.

She built the sandcastles and he knocked them down, and now here they were, sharing a train seat with nothing between them but a foot of space and a few bittersweet memories.

He did not even look that different. There was that old lesion slash of white like a sliver of bone peeking through, of course, and the bulge of arms that used to protrude like knobs of tree branch-

But the eyes, bright as high noon ocean glint, were the same, if you did not look too closely, if you did not choose to notice that the boy's had gleamed like that because they sparked with laughter, while the man's-

The man's just refracted light back to her like empty store front window, reflective glass with nothing behind it.

There were tight-closed shutters across the boy's eyes now, and they turned his gaze into a one way mirror.

For just a moment, she wondered what went on behind them, and then Deling City flashed like the glitter of sun off seagull-specked water that she could still see playing itself out in a soundless home movie behind her eyelids-

_-quisty come get your jacket ok the wind's cold-_

_-quisty get back up in the tree I'm supposed to come save you I _said _get back in the tree-_

_-mother's welcome-home smile and fresh-baked pie scent and children's unfettered laughter-_

She missed that laughter. She missed that laughter and the flutter of her mother's sheets flapping in salt-scented sea breeze-she even missed his knight's sword of taped-together stick and oh _Hyne _why had she had to give it all up, why couldn't she have it _back_-

Some days she felt a little like that stick, held together by just the fraying strands of sand eroded duct tape he had to keep replacing, fluttering in the same breeze that snapped and tore and stole her mother's sheets.

The train slid to a halt that threw her against him, and the handle of his gun blade jabbed her in the shoulder.

She wondered what boy Seifer would think of the sword he had grown up wielding like he'd been born to it, and the things he had used it for.

The princesses he had murdered instead of saved, the maidens he had thrown to the monster instead of riding them off into the sunset aboard his noble steed-

But then they were fairy tales for a reason, weren't they? Real life did not follow a neatly laid-out plotline that always culminated in the hero getting the girl. Sometimes, the hero did not even survive. Sometimes, the hero stared up at the princess through the gory ruin of his smashed-in skull, shattered by the whip of monster's tail that broke his face and then his sternum, turning his chest into gaping museum exhibit of still-beating heart and wet lung pulsation.

And sometimes, the hero turned out to be the villain he had grown up knowing he would one day vanquish.

* * *

><p>He had known walking into Deling City like this, like he could pretend to be casual about the pale ghosts of the parade spectactors he could see lining the sidewalks around him, was a big fucking mistake.<p>

He had just not known it would hit like this.

He had not known it would leave him hunched over with his hand on the telephone booth he had fallen against, sucking air like he was dying while she walked on ahead of him.

He had not known it would twitch his knees in the spastic jerks that convinced him for one frantic moment of throat vise panic that her puppet's strings were still in him, still fucking _controlling _him-

Buckling them under him, bringing them to dirt and litter and oil smeared pavement-

And he was kneeling, he was _kneeling _oh fuck not again not _again_-

He was giving birth to his fucking heart again, his stomach retching up bile, forcing out the acid he could feel flaying his throat like her fucking nails in his back-

Quistis-

_Quistis_-

He couldn't let her see him like this.

She was stopping now, aware he was no longer beside her, suddenly conscious of the fact that he had fallen behind, and he could see a swirl of blonde now like sunlight across his retinas, arcing across the field of his vision in the down slice of murderer's blade that kissed the shivering tendons of her bent neck, and pulled the world out from beneath him like yanked welcome mat.

* * *

><p>D District Prison<p>

Galbadia

1 Year Ago

They were going to kill his mother.

They were going to kill his mother but not him, not puppet Seifer, lapdog Seifer, broken little fragments of boy Seifer that couldn't be stitched back together again anyway.

Why not lop his fucking head off? Why _not _make him kneel across the brown patches of old bloodstain she kneeled on now, her face pale and her eyes tear-wet as she scanned the crowned, trying to find him-

He couldn't fucking look.

He _wouldn't_.

There was something inside of him, chewing Seifer like fire. It ate his heart and then his lungs, crawling down into his gut where it took up residence like a rodent.

His mother his rapist his pupper master his _mother_-

He couldn't let them kill his fucking mother.

Cut out the benign tumor but leave the fucking cancer cells behind-that's what they were doing, pardoning him but not her, that's what they were _killing_ because they could make themselves believe she had used him like a marionette, rode him like a whore-

But they could not accept that a sorceress from the future had done the same to her, that it was not Edea Kramer herself who had perpetrated all of this, who had ruined an innocent boy and tried to bring the whole world to its knees.

They would rather believe she was the only threat, the final threat, and they would rather leave him behind, alone, in a world that would not forget and would not forgive.

They would rather save the boy no one had ever really wanted anyway.

He did not want to be saved. He wanted to take her place, wanted to let that man's fist in her hair force him to both knees instead while Matron sobbed herself numb in Cid's arms, because then at least it would mean he had rescued her.

Seifer had never rescued anyone before. He had killed and maimed and sacrificed-

_-murderer puppet lapdog you worthless sack of shit you _traitor_-_

But he had never gotten to be the savior boy Seifer had always promised himself he would grow up to become. He had never gotten the fairytale ending he was so fucking sure was waiting for him-

And he sure as shit wasn't going to let someone else take the villain's demise for him.

They had not returned Hyperion to him yet.

He did not need it.

Seifer rushed the platform where his mother waited to die with a lunge that bulldozed aside the sick fucks of the spectators gathered around him, punching here, elbowing there when they did not get out of his way fast enough-

And then fucking Pubes was there to save the day, getting his arms around Seifer's waist and tossing him down in the basic takedown maneuver they had all learned their first day in Unarmed; when they hit Seifer rolled, and came up with an arc of elbow trailing tattered coat sleeve like ripples of dirty flag, and Pubes went down spitting blood.

He got a hand on the edge of the platform they wanted to make into her gravesite, and he saw his mother's flare wide, saw her lips twitch in the wordless denial of the horrified protest she could not quite push up out her throat-

And then some _fucker _had him by the leg, and he split his forehead going down, along the seam of Lionheart-inflicted wound and down across the bridge of his nose where it caught steel-trimmed podium lip.

"Get off me! _Get the fuck off me! _Fucking _get off me_!"

He tasted dirt like blood.

He inhaled it into his lungs, breathed it like the bitter acid of the tears that he had fucking _promised _himself he would not cry when she left his dark room-salt burn like childhood sea slipping past pinched-tight lips, down his throat and into his gut, his shrunken, bile-masticated gut-

Someone pulled him to his feet in time to see her head flop like a beached fish, the final reflex twitch of her last blink aimed at him.

No no no no no no no no-

"_No_! _No!_"

He'd never known he could fucking scream like this, never known he could fucking _sound _like this, like he'd swallowed glass and was now trying to shriek through the shredded hamburger he had made of his throat and his tongue.

He jerked his arms free-and just what the fuck was he going to do what the _fuck _was he going to do now with her neck dragging chopped-off arteries like the wisps of vine she had let creep along the edges of his home because she thought they were pretty-

Why the hell-why the _fuck _had they stopped him-didn't they fucking _get it_? Didn't _they fucking understand_?

Didn't they know he was supposed to be-didn't they realize he _deserved _to be- where she was now, the disappointing failure of the man boy Seifer had grown up to become separating in two distinct pieces to the celebratory cheers of the watching crowd?

Didn't they-

Didn't they _fucking_-

He sagged to his knees in front of his mother's vacant eyes, sobbing.

He hurt so fucking bad-he hurt so fucking _bad _and where was she to bandage his scrapes where was she to kiss away his _goddamn _tears-

Why the _fuck _had she left him-

_-matron I can't find you where'd you go MATRON where are you there's monsters in here-_

He turned out to be worthless in the end after all, just like she'd predicted_-you can't protect me can you they're better than you aren't they _boy-because there she fucking was, crumpled like the rag doll Quistis had tried to make him play with, the one he'd hurled into the wall across from his bed, there she fucking _was_, staring accusations up at him-

_-seifer you're a failure seifer I _told _you to kill them don't touch me mommy's mad at you-_

_-mommy _hates _you, boy-_

Someone was holding him now, propping him up, and these arms were gentle, these arms felt like his mother's, and he let himself fold like that rag doll into them, like all the fucking memory of how to stand had just bled out his legs.

When his muscle memory went, it took everything with it, and he went dead inside.

Inside each little pocket of numbness, there was another, and another, one layered on top of the other until there was nothing else, until _he _was nothing else, just anesthetized skeleton man folded away inside his casket of cold-scoured bone.

And this time, when they took him away, Seifer let them do it without a fight.

* * *

><p>Deling City<p>

Galbadia

Present Day

"Seifer?"

Creepers of sawed-off neck vein-

Paint splash of the reddest fucking red he'd ever seen, the reddest fucking red that had ever _existed_-

Barren glass marbles with nothing inside them anymore, nothing that loved or hated or soothed or broke him-

"Seifer? Are you all right?"

Her voice brought him down, brought him out, and he blinked himself back into the reality that slowly coalesced around him: rain sprinkled cement and razor edge of the gravel pieces stabbing his palms-

Nosy by passer stare, several of them skipping right the fuck on by when they realized just who it was they were looking at.

He slowly brushed his hands off. "I tripped."

She did not believe him. He could see it in her eyes, but fuck it; she didn't care what had really happened anyway, and if she would let him get away with pretending you better sure as fuck believe he was going to do it.

Quistis waited for him to catch up, frowning up at the sky that had begun to leak a few drops of rain down onto their heads in the time it took Seifer to force his stomach back down into the general vicinity of where it belonged.

"How long we got here?" he demanded, feeling vaguely satisfied that people still skirted him when they could, arcing out around him in a ninety degree angle of caution that took them out of his path even if it put them into someone else's.

Looked like infamy really did hang around longer than starry-eyed hero worship; more people were looking at him than Quistis, though maybe that was just because he had a huge fucking sword strapped to his back.

"Half an hour. I need to find a bookstore-I spilled coffee all over the book I was reading on the train, and it's not mine. I was hoping to find another copy of it."

Good. He needed to get the hell out of this place-too many trigger points of gut curdling flashback, that corner junction of wall there with the pale ghost smear of blood he could still see across it, spilled from innocent bystander head in the moment of stampeding chaos that followed Squall's one man assault on their float-

This cordoned-off section of street here, the same segment of roadway he'd glided down with his mother, like king and queen, overlord and minion-

Master and slave.

Seifer blinked, and shook his head.

He made a swipe for the novel she held up, and came away with it in his hand.

"Hey-"

Seifer held it out of her reach when she grabbed for it. "For Love of Her Majesty? What the fuck is this shit?"

"It's _Selphie_'s. Please give it back."

He squinted dubiously down at the cover. This wasn't honestly what women fucking wanted was it, windblown girl's hair and open shirt front and sensitive jerk face that reminded him a little of that thousand mile I-gotta-shit glare Pubes was always giving him?

Fuck him sideways; if this was what women wanted-if this was what _Quistis _wanted-then Seifer Almasy was certainly shit out of luck.

He flipped it open to a random passage.

"'And when they came together it was perfect, it was magical, and he filled her to the core with the throbbing length of his glorious man meat. She was a virgin, pure and untouched and pure, but he was so gentle and compassionate and amazing and beautiful and wonderful that it didn't hurt at all-" He broke off, laughing. "Are you fucking kidding me? Did some fourteen-year-old virgin copy this out of her diary?"

Quistis took it back from him, her cheeks burning slightly. "I know, it's horrible. I should have known better since Selphie recommended it, but she went on and on until I decided I had to read it, and, well-"

"You were thinking about hanging yourself from the luggage rack when I stopped by?"

"Something like that."

They walked down the street side by side, his shoulder occasionally brushing hers, the rain beginning to come down more enthusiastically now. Quistis kept glancing up at the sky and then back to the line of shops marching away down the sidewalk in front of them, an anxious back and forth whip of her fishtail that kept pulling his eyes back when he was trying to pay attention to their surroundings.

"It looks like a storm."

"So?"

"I don't like getting wet."

"What are you, a fucking cat?"

"It's messy." Quistis said, like she was referencing the end of the world.

Seifer shook his head and let her precede him into a little shop at the end of the first row of many, the bell above the door tinkling.

Why did those fucking things always have to sound like the wind chimes Matron had strung up above the front door of the orphanage, the ones he had accidentally broken when the rock he was aiming at Zell hit them instead?

It was the only time he could remember her yelling at him.

Seifer positioned himself by the door as Quistis walked up to the counter with a smile-yeah some fucking random store clerk got a smile but not a damn thing for her old student-watching her hips as she crossed the generic brown carpet soaking up the small veins of water dripping off his fingertips.

Trepe had a little swing to her ass.

He grinned; Seifer had never seen that before.

Probably too much to hope that it was for him.

He still didn't get this new obsession with her. Just what, exactly, had changed? Same old Trepe, right? Same old stick-up-the-ass insistence on the procedure she clung to with the same illogical death grip he kept on Hyperion. They both needed their anchor lines, strip ties that kept them bound down in the hurricane eye of the ass-over-fucking-teakettle insanity of the world around them, picking away at their lives one short, unraveling strand at a time.

Maybe that was what had changed his mind about her. Quistis Trepe, Instructor Trepe-the military rigid polar opposite to his absolute disdain for anything even vaguely representing authority-wasn't really as different from him as Seifer had always thought.

On the surface, sure-she kept her reins in perfect arches of well-trained obedience across her pretty little neck, and he pulled at the bit. Always straining, always testing, resentful and bored and utterly fed up with the restraints they kept putting on him, the same ones he kept breaking.

She was the fucking poster child of the institution he'd spent his whole life challenging.

He was the pestilence that fucker Cid had tried to train out of them all, right alongside their compassion and their innocence and the distinct personalities they were not supposed to have, the ones that did not quite fit right in a soldier's body of unthinking, unfeeling killing machine.

Garden rolled SeeDs out its doors like automobile parts off an assembly line, only Seifer had slipped the mold somehow and made his way out into the world alone.

It had turned out real fucking great for him, too.

Quistis had never even thought about defying the system, he knew. Garden was the steel framework of her backbone, the purpose she so desperately needed sustaining her like slow drip I.V. line. It was as much a part of her as the pulse he'd watched bang against her neck, the one his mother had ordered him to stop.

But in reality she made just as shitty a soldier as he. She followed her orders, crossed her t's and dotted her i's, but there was too much of child Quistis left in her, too strong a conviction that she could put everything right again if she just did everything perfectly, if she just tied her shoes and combed her hair and brushed her teeth exactly correct.

Nobody got to see the woman beneath the mercenary, the teacher, first because she had not let them, and later because they did not want to. They were too busy watching the moon shine out of her ass, too preoccupied with their own idol image of flawless woman to realize that Quistis had moods and hopes and fuck-ups all her own, just like the rest of them.

He, of course, being the most spectacular of the last.

Seifer wondered if she noticed how carefully he dissected her, in the beginning simply because he'd wanted to know which buttons to push, and more recently because he had, inexplicably, perhaps inevitably, begun to find her fascinating.

Probably not. She did not notice much about Seifer Almasy beyond the fact that he was an asshole with a mouth like a sailor on him.

She turned away from the counter with a plastic bag in her hand, and suddenly those lips with that smile she never gave him were aimed his way, were pointed right the fuck at him, and his chest lit up-

And then he realized it was just the polite return greeting she doled out to a customer who'd walked in behind him, and Seifer scowled.

She held the bag out to him.

He crossed his arms, scowling harder. "What the fuck am I, your valet? You want someone to hold your shit, get a boyfriend."

Quistis sighed and jiggled it impatiently at him. "Just for a moment so I can put my wallet away, Seifer. Please."

Fuck.

He took the goddamned bag.

Seifer passed it back to her as they reached the exit, stepping in front of Quistis to hold the door open.

She raised an eyebrow suspiciously, like she thought he was going to brain her with it or something, and then preceded him out into thundering rainstorm, zigzags of lightning like tongue flicks of battleground spell flare turning the clouds into a long ago sky of pyrotechnical wonder.

He always came back to those fireworks. Maybe because it was one of his favorite memories, too.

Looking up at the storm, Quistis sighed.

There was a man with a newspaper parked on the bench outside the shop they emerged from, and Seifer snatched it rudely away from him as they stepped out from beneath the canvas overhang keeping the rain off them.

He tented it over her head.

"Seifer!" Quistis scolded.

"What? That guy was an idiot anyway."

"How could you possibly know that?"

"He was holding his paper upside down." He'd been holding it upside down because he was too busy looking at Quistis' ass to pay attention to what he was doing, but Seifer didn't mention that to her. He didn't want her thinking _he _was paying attention to her ass-which of course he was, but she didn't need to know that.

"Give it back." she ordered.

Fine. Excuse him for trying to be a fucking gentleman.

Seifer gave in with poor grace, folding the whole thing and hurling it back into the man's face, his eyes surgically attached to Quistis' backside once again.

He gathered up his paper and fled when he noticed the look on Seifer's face.

"We have fifteen minutes before the next train is supposed to leave, which should give us plenty of time to get back to the station." She pulled her jacket up over her head like a hood, stepping down off the sidewalk and into the swirling river currents of backed-up gutter.

They made it in two at a dead sprint, a time they could have cut down significantly had Seifer not turned back halfway into their trip with the intention of gutting the idiot who whipped past in their car fast enough to send a backwash of water like cresting ocean wave down over their heads, rendering Quistis' jacket completely inadequate.

She'd just barely persuaded him that splashing someone with a little water did not merit the death penalty.

It wasn't anywhere close to 'a little' fucking water, but he let her lead him away anyway, because she was voluntarily touching him with that warm, warm hand now, and when he slid his fingers down through hers on the pretense of yanking her from the path of an oncoming vehicle, the pounding storm and damp rope twists of her hair kept Quistis' mind too preoccupied to notice, and Seifer got to walk like that for several long, long moments of heart fluttering ecstasy.

The speakers over their head shrieked, and then exploded in a crackle of static. "All incoming and outbound trains from Station 3C, Deling City, are currently undergoing a delay. An accident occurred at the cross sections of Tracks 9B and 12A twenty minutes ago just outside of Centra, and in accordance with safety procedures, we have shut down all traffic until everything is cleared off. All trains should be up and running as per usual tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow?" Quistis said with a frown.

"Fucking great." Seifer snapped.

She looked down at his hand and then back up at him, and dropped it like he'd just burned her.

Scowling up at the now-silent arc of weather-beaten metal over their heads like it had just personally insulted him, Seifer crossed his arms again, resisting the urge to tear it down with Hyperion and stomp it to death beneath the mother of all temper tantrums.

Fucking idiot train operator.

Fucking rain.

Fucking _Trepe_.

She was trying unsuccessfully to ring the water from her hair, looking mildly disgusted. "Well, I suppose now we look for a car."

* * *

><p>At the rental agency, Seifer and Quistis learned that every available vehicle had already been leased out for the day.<p>

With a sigh, she reluctantly headed back out into the rain in search of a hotel room, though not before giving him a look like he was a pile of shit she'd just stepped in.

Hyne, what did she think he was going to do, peep on her in the shower?

Her fears turned out to be unnecessary, however, since they ended up being shit out of luck in getting a room for the night, too. Some kind of convention was going on in the city that day, which translated into zero vacancy even after Quistis offered a substantially generous amount of gil for their dingiest closet of a room, and Seifer offered to shove Hyperion tip-first up their assholes if they didn't find something acceptable right that very fucking minute.

Quistis steered him back outside before the Galbadia Hotel's manager could call the police.

She looked miserable.

It made him want to stop the rain, clear the tracks with his bare fucking hands-carry her all the way home on his fucking back if that was what she wanted, if that was what she _needed _to wipe that spastic twist of pain from lips glossed in subtle red like diluted cherry.

They chose a bench to share that was not too crusted in bird shit, and when he crowded her personal space this time, his knee grazing hers, Quistis did not protest. He could feel cold setting in like the beginning seizure twitch of a grand mal attack, her slender frame trembling where it huddled against him.

Seifer stretched his long legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankle.

"Maybe Rinoa's father would take us in for the night." she suggested through teeth chatter like the _click click click _of the building blocks he had torn down as a child, the ones Irvine had spent an entire day molding into an arc of building spire here, an abstract square of futuristic space ship there.

"Tch. You maybe. I used to date his little princess, remember? He didn't like me very much. Security will probably shoot me on sight."

"Why doesn't that surprise me." She could barely get the words out through her shivering mouth, intermittent as a tic, and Seifer looked down at her with a frown.

"Fucking hell, Quistis." he snapped, gathering her under the curve of his arm.

She tried to shrug his arm off, but he jerked her into his side, pressing her there until she began to melt willingly into the radiant body heat there, turning her cold nose into his ribcage with a grateful sigh.

He hoped she couldn't feel his heart, trying to punch its way out of his chest.

What a fucking place to get stuck in; everywhere he looked Seifer could see remnants of his old life, the past that kept scraping itself up from the core of twisted, stunted man he had become, superimposing itself over the present he had tried to make into something that did not even vaguely resemble her lips or hands or viper's hiss of terrible influence-

_-her cunt squeezing his shaft milking his balls riding him like used-up hooker fucking out his final days of junkie down spiral-_

Seifer set his chin down on her head, closing his eyes.

His mother had never felt like this in his arms, soft and pliant and undemanding.

He let himself sit there holding her as long as his conscience would allow him, because he knew there would be no opportunity like this again, no supple silhouette of perfect lip arch burning through his shirt to the skin below.

No Quistis Trepe snuggling into him like she wanted to stay there forever, because all he was to her was warm fucking body, useful meat sack that she could discard when she didn't need him anymore.

Not a living, breathing man, aching for her the way he'd hurt for his mother, his _real _mother and not the counterfeit monster smiling at him from her mirror, all teeth.

_-she'd always been teeth like fang scoring his back his neck his chest all motherfucking teeth everywhere in his throat his shoulder his _soul_-_

Seifer pulled her up with him.

He paused to let a car go by and then jogged across the street to the sidewalk opposite their bench, keeping Quistis tucked underneath his shoulder as he opened the door to the shop he'd aimed them at and shoved her in ahead of him.

He shook water from his hair like a dog_-good little boy little dog_-and shut the door behind him, letting go of her arm reluctantly.

They were inside a little knicknack store Rinoa had once dragged him into, demanding a souvenir of the day they'd just spent together; he'd offered to give her a souvenir if she knew what he meant, which had been met with a shoulder punch that didn't hurt very much, and the pouty frown that meant he better buy her something shiny, quick. There was a counter near the front selling pastries and the kind of pretentious douche bag drinks he had always mocked Rinoa for buying, and Seifer headed for it now.

Two black coffees and a blueberry muffin later, he joined Quistis at the small café table she'd selected near the back of the store.

He tossed the muffin down between them with a thump.

Quistis took her coffee gratefully, burying her face in its steam, sitting without drinking for a moment with it just cupped between her hands, her eyes half closed.

It was odd being here with her now, seeing blonde instead of raven when he peeked up over the rim of his cup, blue and not brown-

Silence, and not incessant gossip chatter.

They were complete opposites, these women he had loved.

Had he loved Rinoa? He wasn't sure.

Once, he'd thought he had. She was sweet and cute and had a stubborn little pout that could make him do shit he was still embarrassed to admit, and for cadet Almasy, teenaged Seifer Almasy, that was enough. She was the princess and he was her knight. He could get into that shit, you know? He could slay her dragons and ride her off into the sunset on his majestic steed-a rented motorcycle daddy Caraway had very nearly crapped himself over-and he could catch the half-faint of the swoon she went into in his arms. He could make himself believe that was enough, that at the conclusion of it all, his fairytale ending was waiting for him.

But the stories were shit. Sometimes, the knight wasn't the hero at all. Sometimes, the hero was the automaton-faced prick of the knight's childhood rival, the indifferent little shit that hadn't bothered to care about anything but rode off into the sunset with everything the knight had set out to possess anyway. The princess and the fame and the war medals Balamb had insisted on awarding the Liberi Fatali-Squall had gotten them all.

And what had Seifer come away with? A back full of scars and the bitter fantsasies of what he might have been, what he might have done? A be-grateful-we-didn't-kill-you-you-miserable-piece-of-shit dismissal, quiet and slinking and shamed, all the things Balamb's government had been after they let him go?

Talk about the short end of the fucking stick.

Now all he had left, all he had to look forward to, was a soldier's death alone on some battlefield, coughing blood and pieces of gut and no one there to hold his fucking hand.

Loneliness was a bitter pill to swallow, but he'd been taking it for a long time.

He gagged it down like an expert now.

Quistis was looking at him when he came out of his reverie.

He stared back at her.

After a moment she broke the connection and returned to her coffee, holding it in one hand to take a drink and breaking off a small chunk of muffin with the other, rolling it between thumb and index finger before slipping it between her lips.

He watched her repeat this same ritual for a good several bites, his coffee gradually cooling in front of him. "You gotta' be fuckin' kidding me."

Quistis pushed her glasses back up her nose, smearing condensation from its lenses with a thumb. "What?"

"You even eat like a fucking machine."

She looked down at the purple-studded lump between her fingers, flushing a little, her hand twitching self-consciously away from it and going back into a white-knuckled coil around her mug. "I'm not a machine." Quistis said quietly.

Seifer tipped his chair back on two legs.

He knew. A long time ago, shortly after her arrival at Garden, she had tried to make herself into one; machines were not perfect either, but they were far more infallible than human beings, and so she studied and fought and cast like one, tireless, emotionless, all the great potential wound up inside of her the premium grade gasoline that drove her body onward. She ate praise, lapped faultless test scores-

And cried herself to sleep when the first fuck-up of her soldier's career was a huge one, a Firaga spell she had pushed too hard, too soon to master, the magic blowing her wrists open in two Frankenstein flaps of ugly wound and killing her training partner.

He'd found her in the library afterward, huddled behind one of her precious books, the beloved defense screen of time-worn binding she kept between herself and the whispering, pointing world that went on around her like the entire universe had not just shattered into the pieces of hideous reality that made up a soldier's whole existence. She'd only been eleven; at that age, training was simply the you're-going-to-go-far admiration of her teachers, and the perfectly penciled-in answers of her flawless assignments. Not blank death stares and hot-cold pain like an inferno made up of Trabian winter.

She'd been crying. Quietly, so no one would notice-but he had noticed, he had _always _noticed, and she didn't even remember him.

She didn't even remember him, standing there in front of her wanting to hold her, wishing he could bandage this new wound as easily as he'd dressed her cuts and scrapes and gravel burns.

He'd wanted to hold her, but because she had forgotten him, because there was not even the slightest splinter of recognition in her damp eyes, Seifer had lashed out instead.

_-jeez big baby why you crying you big baby look quisty's crying-_

Hyne, he'd been a little shit. Not that he could say there was a whole lot of difference between his attitude then and the way he kept the world at bay now, snarling and snapping and doubling back on himself to make sure there was no one lurking behind him, just waiting for that one split second instant of opening he left, wide enough for a knife, a bullet-

_-a mother's claws-_

He looked away from her, out the window.

Deling City was a hub of activity, even soaking wet, people and cars and lumbering transit buses blurring together in watercolor strokes like the memories that all ran together in his head in streaks like damp paint.

Most of it was red.

It was the predominant color that shaded all the flashes of things he did not want to recall-mother's lipstick and victim's blood and open flame of hand-clenched spell, just waiting for him to fuck up.

Deling City had become Edea/Matron/Ultimecia, Rinoa, her warrior knight charging him from the shadows that smiled at him like Matron's eyes, dark and gaping and soulless-_he was going fucking crazy because shadows did not smile they did not fucking _smile_-_and even now, looking out at the ant smears of people dashing here and there, he didn't really see them.

It was all his mother. All the precious little princess he had finally possessed the way he'd always wanted to, the one he'd let just slip through his fingers. The one he had let fall into Squall's arms, because Seifer Almasy couldn't even save himself, let alone some fluttering little damsel in distress.

He glanced back at Quistis.

He was stuck here anyway.

Maybe it was time to make some new memories.

* * *

><p>It was just after noon when they left the shop, the rain having finally slowed to a manageable trickle, and they had most of the day left open, unrestricted, something rare and infinitely precious in a SeeD's short life.<p>

So he took her to the park down the road, and watched her exclaim over the species of rare flowers that grew there, the scientist in Quistis carefully chronicling and labeling and filing them all away in her brain. He chased away the squirrel that kept poking nosily around the lunch she treated them to-hot dogs from a street vendor; Wuss would have shit himself-making a cursing, panting spectacle out of himself when the little fucker just wouldn't quit. He showed her all the swooping, spiraling carnival rides Rinoa had always been too afraid to go on with him, the ones Quistis had the balls to belt herself right into without even a second thought blink, and then he took her down the road to the weather-delayed street fair just setting up.

He followed her like her shadow, like the guardian he had never really had the opportunity to be, Hyperion across his back and death threats in his eyes-Hyne, there were a lot of sleazy jerk offs staring at her-letting her wander and touch and enjoy herself.

He didn't see her do that too often.

She smiled, and laughed at his stupid fucking jokes.

And he fell even more head over fucking heels, down into an abyss he knew he would not be clawing his way up from anytime soon.

When the sun winked out over the far horizon line, the city came to life in an explosion of lights and laughter and tinkling piano notes around them; she stopped in the street to listen, smiling at something he couldn't guess.

"You want to go in?" Seifer asked.

"I'm pretty sure that's out of the question, after your little…incident with the manager."

He grabbed her by the arm. "I didn't say we were going to go in the front door; fuck, I'm not an idiot."

Seifer snuck Quistis in through a side entrance that took them directly to the little piano bar just off the main lobby of the Galbadia Hotel, sliding into a booth near the back. He could tell she was a little apprehensive, a little unsure-like she was breaking some kind of rule, sitting here next to him, her thigh pressed along his in a long lean line of warmth that soaked all the way through his pants to the skin beneath.

Tehnically, there was no actual rule saying they couldn't be in here, though the manager had made it pretty clear he hadn't wanted to see Seifer's face anywhere near his hotel again. Funny how touchy people could get when the subject of anal insertion came up-particularly when the object to be doing the inserting happened to be very large and very sharp.

The pianist was talented, her shoulders arching softly over each depression of key and foot pedal, her slender fingers performing a dancer's airy waltz over shiny ivory. He wondered if this was how Squall's idiot father had felt, sitting here twitching out his bumbling moron's knee jerk of fidgety tension, yearning after something he could never have. He'd heard the story a thousand times while he was dating Rinoa, who thought the unresolved love story between her mother and the mysterious soldier she had never forgotten was the most romantic thing she'd ever heard. Until the fairytale she and Pubes had spun out between them, anyway, vanquished monsters and handsome knights and sunset happy endings-all the things boy Seifer used to go to sleep dreaming about, all the delusions of grandeur his mother had put in his naieve young head.

He'd always thought the dangling plot strand of storybook romance what's-her-fucking-face and Laguna had never gotten to live out was stupid-if you liked a woman, you just went and got her; none of the goddamned pussy-footing around Squall's father had wasted too much time doing. She wanted you or she didn't-it was that simple. She didn't, and you moved on to the next warm hole that did. There was always one or two or five, waiting in the wings-or at least there always had been for him. Life was too fucking short to let that kind of shit slip through your fingers.

Unless you were Seifer Almasy, and the woman you loved was Quistis Trepe, because then what was the point in even fucking trying? What was the point in even expecting anything more than a distracted pat on the head when he was good, a cuff to the head when he was bad, like the compliant little fucking lapdog his mother had shaped him into?

There wasn't. So he would ride out his life, his fixation, watching her when she didn't notice, insinuating himself into her days when he could get away with it, panting after her like a bitch in fucking heat.

Absofuckinlutely pathetic.

What would boy Seifer think of him now, standing in the shadows while the damsel saved herself, running from the monsters he had not been able to slay after all? Kneeling beneath his puppet's strings, huddling in dark corners for the rest of his life, waiting for her hand to lift again, strike again-

Before, he had always wanted to cast the shadows and not hide in them.

Boy Seifer would probably be just as disgusted as the rest of the world was.

It was well after dark when they made it back to the train station where they would spend the night; not ideal sleeping quarters, obviously, the phantom flicker of emergency lights overhead turning the deserted depot into an eerie cavern that yawned open around them like his mother's bared teeth, dripping shadows and decay. But it was relatively warm at least, and they picked out their respective benches without speaking, Seifer leaning Hyperion up against the wall next to him.

He watched Quistis nod off into sleep like death, stretched out on her bench with her jacket draped over her, glasses tucked neatly inside the breast pocket.

She had her neck cranked at an angle that would mean one hell of a stiff morning.

Seifer rolled his eyes and got up with a little muttered curse, scratching at the tuft of hair that kicked up over the back of his neck, the one he could feel grazing the nape every so often, irritating him.

He didn't even know what the hell he was doing.

He took Hyperion with him, switched it over to the wall next to her bench, and then very, very carefully, he picked up her head and slid himself beneath it, re-settling it in his lap.

She did not wake up.

Just as carefully, Seifer took a piece of loose-hanging bang between his fingertips, running hair like silk through the scabbed-over bumps of his calluses, letting the backs of his knuckles just barely graze her cheek.

Trepe was so fucking, fucking beautiful like this, soft 'o' of sleep-parted mouth and crescent moon arch of shut-tight lash.

It made his chest hurt.

It made him wonder how fucking stupid Leonhart was, to have let all this slip past him without even a second glance.

Out of the corner of his eye, Seifer could see shadows pacing the border line of their safe haven, thrown back by soft wall lights that would not keep them at bay forever.

He scraped his knuckles down over the arc of her cheekbone again, allowing them to circle down over her mouth, and then he shut his eyes, and let them come.

There was nothing else he could do. They were always there, and they would always come for him.

They pulled him down with them, into a storm drain spiral of light sound hands lips-

_-hello boy the shadows said hello boy are you going to play with us seifer come play house matron seifer won't play house-_

_-hello boy said the shadows why are you crying let mommy fix it seifer let mommy make it all better- _

_-hello boy-_


	12. Chapter 10

**A/N: As always, a big thanks to my reviewers. I really appreciate that you guys took the time to comment on this. Also, I hope I managed to catch any mistakes in this, because I always preview this before I post it to do one last read-through, and I've had a fucking headache like a wood chipper in my brain the whole time I've been looking at this. So if you run across any typos, it's because everything is sort of blurring together in front of my eyes right now.**

**Chapter Ten**

Presidential Palace

Esthar

His hand felt cold where it cradled his cheek and swept along the clenched-up bulge of his jaw line, winched down like it wanted to break teeth.

Laguna glanced up at his wall clock, feathered Chocobo face leering out at him from its vantage point far over his head, the minute hand ticking out each slow, measured footstep of forward march. Even when the rest of his world had stalled around him, even when he was still back in that room with Rinoa's dark head bent over him, his son's face swimming down to him through the ripples of his blurring consciousness-

That stupid clock kept going, kept moving.

And his son did not visit.

His son, if Laguna was being brutally honest with himself, would never visit.

"Whoo hoo!" Kiros snapped his hand back and forth in front of Laguna's face. "You still with us?"

"Huh?" He peeled his hand away from his cheek. "Yeah."

"Then put down your next card."

Laguna frowned down at the 3x3 grid Kiros had set up on his desk in between the stacks of paperwork Ellone was still slowly but surely making her way through. "Uh…where were we again?"

Kiros aimed a card threateningly at him. "You don't start paying attention, and I'm going to tell your lovely young niece about that one time you got drunk and passed out in the alleyway behind Nana's-"

"Whoa!" Laguna patted the air with his hands. "That stuff's not for kid's ears."

Ellone rolled her eyes, marking something down on the sheet of paper she had pinned beneath her left hand. "I'm sure I can handle it, Uncle Laguna."

He watched her fondly for a moment until Kiros flicked another card at him, the beads scattered throughout his exotic hairdo clicking together with a tinny clink like wind chimes.

Laguna threw it back at him. "Where's Ward?"

Kiros rolled his eyes. "He left half an hour ago."

"What? You serious?"

"Yes, Uncle Laguna; he tapped you on the shoulder, smiled, and pointed at the door. You said good-bye and asked him to pick you up a bag of saltwater taffy on his way back."

"I did?" He scratched his head. Damn; he really was out of it. No wonder Ellone kept sneaking him concerned little looks out of the corner of her eye when she thought he wasn't paying attention-which, admittedly, he usually wasn't.

She had her arms crossed over her chest again, a pencil tucked behind one ear.

"You work too hard." he told her.

She narrowed her eyes playfully at him. "Somebody has to around here."

"Well, I think you should take a vacation. Kiros, you think she deserves a vacation, don't you?"

"I think you need to put your next card down, so I can win this game like we both know I'm going to anyway."

Ellone was frowning as she returned to her work. "Something looks off here." She slid the paper across to him. "Column A? Some of my numbers aren't matching up, but I already double-checked them; I'm not sure what's wrong."

He squinted down at the page she was indicating, trying to wind slithering squiggles of meaningless black back together into one cohesive blob, his focus blurring in and out. Crap, he was getting old. "I need my glasses; I can't read that."

Kiros snickered.

"Hey! Just because you don't need them doesn't mean-"

The door to his office exploded open, and Zell Dincht burst inside with Irvine Kinneas right on his heels, swinging a suitcase by its worn handle. "Booyaka! Got everything." He'd picked that up from Selphie, who had been cramming it down his throat so long it had eventually just stuck.

"Don't worry; I kept Dincht from goin' through her underwear."

"Hey, I wouldn't do that!"

Ellone stood up to receive hugs from both of the men; she was nearly eye to eye with Zell but had to stand on tiptoe to drape both arms around Irvine's broad shoulders. "What are you two doing here?"

"You're coming back to Garden with us!" Zell announced, poking around the office with that suitcase still in his hand, opening it up to toss random knickknacks inside: a pencil wrapped entirely in Chocobo feathers, the paperback novel Ellone read in intermittent spurts when she had time, a length of polished obsidian that looked like the walking cane Kiros and Ward had jokingly purchased for Laguna's 45th birthday-

"Hey, that's mine!"

"Yeah-he's gettin' up there. Gonna' need it." Kiros interjected.

"Whoops; yeah, sorry. Wasn't payin' attention." Zell tossed it unthinkingly over his shoulder, nearly hitting Irvine in the head with it.

"Dincht! Watch what you're doin', man."

"Uncle L, _what _is going on?" Ellone demanded, her hands arching up to cup both slender hips, the eye squint of intimidation attempt she threw him falling far short of its mark. If anything, she only looked cuter, standing there with the faint superimposition of pig-tailed little girl he would always see when he looked at her fuzzing in and out of focus, static ghost light.

Like Raine's face, smiling down at him through cocoon layers of slumber, lips the monotone gray of the black and white photograph he kept of her on his bedside table.

"I told you you needed a vacation." Laguna replied.

"Not _now_-you're still recovering. I can't just leave all this paperwork behind. Besides, even at your peak you were pretty much hopeless with it."

"That's true." Kiros was shuffling his cards back into a neat stack, having completely given up on the game finally.

"You think I can't handle a couple pieces of paperwork? I can do it, Ellone; don't worry. I'll just enter everything into the computer; might as well use all these fancy schmancy programs Dr. Odine keeps whipping up, huh?"

"You don't even know how to turn it on." Kiros pointed out.

"I'm not a buffoon-the button's right here." He pointed toward the monitor Ellone had spent the better part of that morning behind.

"That's for the monitor, Uncle L." she said, hiding a smile. "It turns the screen off and on. It doesn't turn the computer itself on."

"Well I knew that." He frowned mock severely at her. "You just pick this thing up and-" He pressed the small rubber nub his hand found, smiling as it clicked satisfyingly. "See?"

"That's the _mouse_, you idiot." Kiros said, shaking his head.

Ellone laughed brightly.

Laguna scratched his head. 'Well, ya' see, I guess I've never actually turned it _on _before-but that doesn't mean I don't know how to use it."

Kiros snorted.

"I do! I've used it before!"

In the background, Zell glanced around carefully, and then furtively dumped an entire bowl of miniature candy bars into the bag they had packed for Ellone.

Irvine smacked him across the back of the head.

"Ow! Knock it off!"

"I saw that!" Laguna called. "Put 'em back, or things are going to get ugly."

"All right, fine. Jeez, I just thought Sis might need 'em." Zell protested sulkily, setting the suitcase down to paw through it.

"Yeah, in case she gets sick of you and has to start throwin' 'em down the hall so you'll chase 'em and leave her alone or somethin'." Irvine drawled.

Zell glared past a spike of drooping blonde at him. Under Laguna's watchful eye, he carefully re-filled the bowl back to its previous level, re-zipping the suitcase with a noisy scratch and straightening up.

"The four in your pocket too, you little ass."

"Aw, come on man!" Zell whined, dutifully emptying his pocket out onto Laguna's desk.

Kiros shook his head.

Ellone hid a smile behind her hand.

Laguna turned to face her, her bright little face chasing the shadows from his soul. They would be back before long, prowling the edges, cutting new holes inside him with a swing of grief like reaper's scythe, new-polished blade wearing his son's face, but for now-

For now her soft eyes and softer smile were enough, and when he crushed her up against him in the good-bye bear hug that had become a ritual between them since her childhood, Laguna held her an extra moment longer, smoothing hair from her eyes.

_Raine, I wish you could see her._

_I wish you could see them both. _

"Have fun!" he told her cheerfully.

Ellone sighed resignedly and allowed Zell and Irvine to each take an arm, the tall cowboy crooking his elbow out at an angle, like he was escorting her to a ball. "Sorry ma'am. Strict orders." he told her with a wink.

The door shut behind them, and Laguna slumped into his chair, the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

He could see Kiros staring at him beyond the whorl and curve of thumb print that was just an abstract smudge of flesh-toned arc this close up, blurry loops of spiral he could only kind of make out.

"She gonna' be any safer there, you think?" he asked quietly.

Laguna shook his head. "I don't know. I just figured it was better than here. At least at Garden, she'll have a couple hundred SeeDs watching her back. And most of the attention seems to have shifted over to me and Esthar for the moment." He tipped his chair back to stare bleakly at the ceiling. "I just…I've already lost my son, Kiros. I can't lose her too. And the hate out there…if it hadn't been for Quistis last week, she might be, Ellone might be-" Laguna shook his head again.

He didn't want to think about it.

"Those boys'll die to keep her safe. She'll be ok, Laguna." his friend said softly.

He knew, and he didn't want to think about that either.

He couldn't stand to lose any of them, their precious children's faces all ringing him in the loose semi-circle of affectionate concern his son had never deigned to join-blue-eyed Quistis with her encyclopedia mind and encouraging smile, Zell the comedian, the dazzling streak of joy like sunlight through the sea of his anguish, the one he slowly drowned himself in. Irvine, Selphie, Rinoa-smiling, laughing, patting his hands, telling him jokes, plaiting his hair into the braids he had proudly shown off to Kiros and Ward, hovering in his doorway like concerned parents.

Laguna closed his eyes.

No, he couldn't let any of them go, the same way he'd held tight to Raine for far too long, the same way he still could not loosen the chokehold of his love for a wife long dead.

He had never been very good at letting go.

* * *

><p>Five minutes later, they had her securely belted into the car they had borrowed from Garden's massive garage, a flashy little red convertible that Ellone wondered how on earth could possibly be conducive to covert SeeD missions.<p>

It wasn't, she found out a few minutes later-the vehicle was Squall's own private one, which they had 'borrowed' courtesy of Zell's sticky fingers, because Irvine had refused to drive the tank his friend had gleefully suggested taking, and Zell refused to travel in anything that gave him motion sickness, which coincidentally enough ruled out all vehicles except Squall's sleek little sports car.

Funny how that worked out, Ellone thought with a smile.

In the front passenger seat, Zell performed the same drum roll cadence with his palms over and over again, slapping them down on the dash in front of him in a heartbeat symphony that drowned out the hiss of tires on pavement until Irvine shouted for him to shut up.

"Yooouuu drive me craaazzyyeee! I just can't sleeeeeep I'm so excited, I'm in too deeeeep-"

"For Hyne's sake, Dincht, there's a lady present. Shut yer yap."

Ellone poked her head up from the back seat, thrusting it between them; Irvine twisted the dial on the radio, backing off the volume, his hand flicking out at Zell like he was an annoying insect he was hoping to trick into flying back out the window. "Sorry you just had to go through that, Sis."

"It's all right." She returned Zell's sunny beam. "I'm sorry he shoved me off on the two of you."

"S'ok, Sis. We're happy to have ya,' and the girls are gonna' crap themselves. We don't get to see you enough, ya' know? So don't even worry about it." Zell ruffled her hair with a gloved hand. "Sides, now you're gonna' be here for the Spring Festival. We'll have fun, Sis, I promise."

"The Spring Festival?"

"Yeah; sorry about that. Selph'll probably rope ya' into helpin.'" Irvine gave her a smile in the rearview mirror. "It's good t' have ya' back, though, Sis."

"He was worried about me, wasn't he?" She sank back into her seat.

"Well…" Zell squirmed in his seat. "Laguna sorta' wanted us to get you out of the Palace because the protests are getting worse and all. He was really worried after what happened with Quistis and you last week. Most of the anti-sorceress crap has switched over to him and Esthar for right now, so he figured you'd be safer with us."

He was probably right, but it didn't make leaving him any easier.

"I gotta' warn you, Selphie's into this new matchmakin' thing-she started a committee for it an' all, and since you're a single lady-" Irvine shrugged helplessly. "Well, I can't promise she ain't gonna' try to hook you up with anything that has a y chromosome and observes basic hygiene. Even Dincht, here."

"Zell would make anyone an amazing boyfriend."

"Thank you!" Zell shouted, elbowing his friend.

"Not while I'm drivin,' you moron!"

"If ya'd stop bein' a turd, I wouldn't have to hit you at all."

"If ya'd stop bein' an idgit, I wouldn't hafta' make so many cracks."

She pressed her head back into the curve of upholstered gel pack molded just so to accommodate all manner of human skull type-even Ward's, she suspected-letting a frail curve of smile like shadow flit across her lips. Ellone listened with half an ear to their good-natured bickering, staring out the window as Esthar passed in a smear of moment like an eye blink, Squall's car more than capable of the very illegal speeds Irvine pushed it to.

His driving took them to the city limits and beyond in minutes, and she watched Esthar's lights blink out one at a time behind her, extinguished like snuffed fireflies.

Her brain kept humming, kept circling, kept bringing her back around to the counterfeit cheer lighting her uncle's face, the one he always had to paste on now because just underneath it, all that was left of him was dying hope, crumbling like the wave-chewed turrets of Quistis' collapsing sand castles.

She watched him break apart the same way she'd watched a little blue-eyed blonde bawl disconsolately next to her destroyed creations, with the horrified powerlessness of a train wreck spectator-she couldn't stop it, couldn't _help _him, and that bleak fact ate her like cancer.

When those mounds of sand inevitably gave way before nature, Ellone helped Quistis re-build them as soon as the tide went back out, crouching there on the beach with the little girl, smoothing and packing and holding up the random pieces of beach treasure that made her smile-agates water-beaten to surface area like silk, pretty arches of unoccupied shell, shards of sea-polished bottle glass-

Ellone did not know how to re-build Laguna.

She went to sleep thinking about that.

* * *

><p><em>He is standing on the beach. It is warm beneath his toes, and he is watching them interact while gentle nips of sea wave play tag with his ankles. <em>

_He does not know how to join them._

_They don't want him to anyway; they have already closed off the loop of ring-around-the-rosie they have formed, their linked fingers catching setting sun like old bone-_

_He blinks. _

_He can see exposed finger joint protruding from shreds of flesh like paper mache, fluttering in rag tatters of decomposing skin. _

_And as he watches, as he tries not to scream, they begin to fly apart-wrist skin and gouged-out iris, bleeding lip curve and flag of scalp piece, drooling blood-_

_And then they are on fire, all of them, Matron and Cid, Seifer and the children, going up with pops of ignition like hisses of torch flare, and while his skin melts off, while it withers and coils and peels off in strips-_

_She is fucking him, and her open-lipped smile shows him teeth like fangs, painted in twists of flame like the tongue flicks of hell red that explode from her sockets. _

_She is fucking him, but he is burning, he is _burning_ and she has to _stop _he's dying and everything hurts-_

_-please stop it hurts matron I need you matron where _are _you-_

Seifer lurched from his dream with a gasp like surfaced drowning victim.

He just barely caught Quistis' head before it slid from his lap, cradling it carefully in his palms, holding his breath as he gingerly eased shining blonde back down across the tops of his thighs.

She hadn't woken up. Some fucking soldier she made.

He let his head thump back against the wall behind him, the turbo hammer of his heartbeat striking sternum plate like it wanted to punch right through, his fingers where they tangled in her hair shaking like an epileptic's.

Seifer shut his eyes and sighed out an exhale that trembled like his hands. Thank fucking Hyne she hadn't woken up.

* * *

><p>Quistis held herself very still, feigning the soft rise and fall chest bob of undisturbed sleep.<p>

He was very warm beneath her, his hands combing her hair in sweeps like the soothing tug of Ellone's brush, their voices counting out together the exact one hundred strokes it took to satisfy Quistis.

She had never even guessed his hands could be this gentle.

They were soldier's hands, warrior's hands, callused and scarred and abrasive as his prickly demeanor, beaten into the nerve-damaged lumps of perfect weapon he had made them into. They were hands that snapped necks and tore cartilage and thrust home Hyperion, and they were hands that mapped out all the weak spots on her body, the kill zones he lashed out for with their mother at his back, her leash around his throat-

They were hands that brushed thumbs soft as a whisper across her cheekbone, and she did not know how to feel about that.

The soldier's hands, the killer's hands-those were the ones she knew, the ones she could understand-these other ones, these soft fans of lover's touch, _these_-

These she did not get at all. No one had ever touched her this way before, and she wondered why he was doing it now. Probably because he could, because even as a child, Seifer Almasy had always wanted everything that was denied him. Toys he formerly had no interest in were suddenly the only thing that mattered as soon as someone else was playing with them, wood-carved actions figures and half-dressed dolls missing their eyes-he wanted them all, and if he could not have them, he broke them.

It was the same way he had treated the world.

His thumb grazed the top of her chin, and the swell of bottom lip overhang there.

Quistis wondered what he was thinking. Why he was still shaking.

She had never really wanted to know the innermost workings of Seifer's head before; Squall, shutter-eyed, blank-faced Squall was the enigma, the rubik's cube she had always needed to solve. She had always just assumed Seifer's thoughts ran something along the lines of the average testosterone-charged, hormonally-driven beast that was the typical teenaged male-breasts and the curve of butt cheek she was always afraid might peek out every time she leaned over thanks to those damn uniform skirts.

She was probably not wrong about that, just as she had not been wrong that there was an actual human being beneath the blasé façade Squall Leonhart chose to present to the world. It had just taken Rinoa Heartilly to bring it out in him.

If there was a human being lurking below the surface of Seifer Almasy, Quistis did not know how to coax it to the surface.

Still, the day they had been forced to spend together had been almost…nice, and she did not quite know how to feel about that. It certainly did not make him her friend-she was not sure anything could do that-but it not quite mean he was her enemy anymore, either.

Perhaps the real rubik's cube was Seifer Almasy and not his twin-scarred rival, the shallow surface layer of beautiful, arrogant man hiding something else. If she peeled apart the seams of egotism holding him together, the arms-length of unpleasant scowl and fast-boil anger with which he kept the world away-

What would she find?

She was not sure she wanted to know.

Quistis Trepe's first attempt at unraveling the complex skein of a cold and enigmatic man had ended like wing-shot bird, a crash that broke her heart open against Squall Leonhart's brisk and uncaring stare. Seifer was not cold-quite the opposite in fact-he was a bonfire banked too high, Firaga gone out of control, and he would burn her if she was not careful-but he had always been just as careless with girl's hearts as Squall, stomping them like ants beneath his boots. She had absolutely no deisre to venture into territory like that again, even if there was no risk of Seifer capturing the girlish fancy she had wasted on his childhood adversary for far too long.

His hands soothed her back down under ocean layers of slumber that lapped at her like sleepy tide, and Quistis let herself sink beneath them again.

* * *

><p>The train ride to Centra was conducted mostly in silence, as was the half hour trip from the car rental agency in a small border town that was the last significant hub of occupation before the orphanage, broken only by a few snarky comments from Seifer regarding her driving. She was 'grandma-like,' needed to 'fucking step on it already,' had just allowed herself to be passed by a thousand-year-old man in a wheelchair, etc. etc.<p>

By the time she pulled up the long gravel drive winding in slow cut-backs toward the only childhood she had ever known, he was silent again.

Their doors slammed in unison, and she pocketed her keys, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

He could not stop staring up at the lighthouse, his lips a pale bloodless slash across the backdrop of his bleached-out skin.

"Seifer?" Quistis prompted, folding her arms against the breeze coiling off the ocean to their right.

He started, jumping like he had forgotten she was there.

She began to proceed slowly toward the sagging steps that would bring her up to the front door, still keeping an eye on him. "Are you coming?"

"No." he said curtly, and then he turned his back on her and strode off toward the beach, the dull-gleaming line of Hyperion gathering sunlight into a point that stabbed her gaze like a blade.

She went alone up to that door, still hugging herself, staring down at flakes of peeling brass for a long time, trying to re-connect them to the high shine newness of the spotlessly-maintained home she had grown up in.

She did not know why it bothered her so much that a simple door knob had fallen into disrepair.

Tentatively, Quistis lifted a fist to knock on the door.

She waited for a long time, hearing nothing. There was just the sigh of the fingers of sea draft pulling her hair from the updo she had needed to fix by the time she woke up for good, and the eternal whisper of incoming surf eroding Matron's beach one precious, unsalvageable inch at a time.

She knocked again.

She waited another minute, and then tried the doorknob, finding that it turned easily in her hand.

Cautiously, Quistis eased the door open, poking her head inside. "Cid?"

There was a light on near the back of the house, spilling tendrils of gold like curls of vine across the dirty carpet.

The unease that clutched her gut like a sweaty fist tightened, and for a moment she thought about calling out for Seifer, providing him with the ammo her failure of courage would give him, just so she would not be alone.

She let steely resolve pull her spine straight, and stepped quietly inside, shutting the door behind her. Quistis Trepe was a big girl, and not in need of a knight in shining armor to hold back the shadows with his sword. Wasn't it acceptable now for the damsel to save herself once in a while?

Or always, if you were a highly-trained mercenary with a right hook like a bulldozer, as Zell-on the wrong end of it after his drunken attentions-had once proclaimed.

"Cid?" she called out again, heading toward the spirals of light that expanded out into a rectangular box of gold as she drew closer, bleeding out from beneath a closed door to her left.

She let the hesitation of her cowardice stay her hand for just a moment, and then she opened the door.

He was sitting in a moth-eaten recliner facing her, both eyes closed, his chin resting on his chest.

For a moment, Quistis thought he was dead, and then a ripple like chain lightning shivered through him, and he peeled his eyes open.

She wished he had not.

Cid Kramer, her headmaster, her teacher, her _father_-had aged a thousand years. He hunched in on himself like terminal nursing home patient, skin folds of advanced age nearly swallowing both eyes, the rotund little swell of his middle-aged belly gone now, replaced with the leftover scraps of stretched-out flesh that were all that remained of former robustness.

The shadows in his eyes had dribbled out in a locus swarm of bleakness like acid, until there was nothing left of Cid Kramer except hollowed-out skeleton man.

He was just bare bones framework now, crouched in the chair he sat like a king overseeing long dead empire.

He blinked up at her for a long time.

She could not say a word, the horror that clogged her throat pressing her tongue down beneath thousand pound deadweight, rendering her utterly speechless, because this man, this father-

This father had bounced child Seifer across shoulders that sagged now like overburdened tree twigs, bending toward the feather of greenstick fracture.

This father had helped her catch butterflies in the field behind the home they had all made together.

This father had taken the boys fishing, all of them, even sullen little Squall who held his pole all wrong and got into fights with Seifer when the other boy mocked him for it.

She brought a hand slowly up to cup her mouth.

"Quistis?" he said finally.

His voice scraped like a claw up her backbone.

It took her several long moments to compose a proper reply. "I…yes, Cid." She did not know what to say next; 'how are you doing' seemed terribly inappropriate, considering his appearance.

His lips twisted into a grimace that resembled the frozen rictus of a corpse's final leer.

He was trying to smile at her.

She felt bile chew through the lining of her stomach, and splash the back of her mouth in a surge that burned like swallowed battery acid.

"Quistis! How are you?"

"I-I'm fine, sir."

He torqued his face in that eerie funhouse mirror contortion of a smile again. "None of that, now. It's just Cid. Can I do something for you, my dear?"

"I-" She knotted her hands behind her back, going into the at-attention stance she always fell back into when she needed to summon the military discipline that was the only thing that would help her to survive something momentous, something horrible-

Something like losing her instructor's license and then her father, shriveled into the pale hunchbacked monster that regarded her now from glasses that sat at an angle she would not have tolerated on her own face.

There was nothing left of the man who had exclaimed over her fingerpaintings in the dull cadaver gleam of his eyes.

She wished-hoped, _prayed_-Seifer would change his mind and come up to the house after all.

She could not stand here alone, looking down on the splinters of her childhood, glittering up at her through the spider web of crack beginning to split his right lens. Gentle father's hands and rare admonition, effusive praise and delighted laughter-she saw them all reflected back to her from those glasses she could remember playing with as a small child, and the fist jumbled up in her gut moved to her throat.

Cid, Edea, her mother, her father-

She had lost them both.

Twice now an orphan.

Twice now alone.

"I-I needed your help with something. But would you excuse me for a moment? I need to get something out of the car really quickly."

"Sure, Quistis." he croaked.

She fled the house like it might come alive around her, flinging the door open and tearing out and down into fresh coast air, the bottom step rearing up to trip her.

She fell to her hands and knees in the sand, leaving them buried there for a long time.

* * *

><p>Balamb Garden<p>

Balamb

2 Years Ago

That little shit Leonhard was glaring at him again.

Around the curve of white sleeve cuff that eclipsed the peripheral view of the one eye he could still see out of, Seifer noticed the bland impassitivity of that dead cow stare narrowed down to focal points like daggers.

He tipped his head back, plugging his right nostril with one finger. It was still bleeding copiously from a lucky hit Leonhart had scored with his elbow, and he could taste clot like sick day phlegm wad at the back of his throat.

The ragged half-moon of fist-shaped bruise circling Leonhart's left eye looked nice, looked _right_, and Seifer thought about giving him a matching one as soon as Kadowaki turned her back.

The door snapped open with a hiss, and he looked up to see Quistis walk through with her hands on her hips, shaking her head.

The head shake was for Squall, because it was scolding but not really angry, reprimand without malice, because all she was concerned about was whether he was truly hurt or not.

The glare that tightened her eyes into slits was all for him.

He gave her his cockiest grin, lounging back on his exam table like he was the spider and she the fly he knew would tangle itself in his web eventually, if he waited patiently enough.

Most women did.

Kadowaki shoved a wad of cotton up his nose with clinical roughness, and he tried not to feel like a dumbass sitting there with a piece of white like toilet paper hanging from his nostril. He was pretty sure it somewhat ruined the effect of his smile.

Not that Trepe had ever seemed particularly moved by it anyway.

"Cadet Almasy, you need to be more careful in your training."

Like he hadn't heard that eight thousand fucking times already.

He appraised her from his table as she stopped in front of Squall, her hands gentle where they touched his chin, tilting it to assess the full spectrum of the damage Seifer had inflicted on his wussy little face.

Personally, he was of the opinion that he had greatly improved it.

Bossy little Quisty had certainly grown into one hell of a woman, he thought, eyeing her. Nice tits-a little on the small side, but wonderfully perky-legs that stretched for miles, a fabulous ass just barely contained by that ridiculous little skirt-

He wondered what it would be like to fuck her.

Judging by the look of distaste she was currently shooting him, copulation between them would probably freeze his balls off.

He bet she'd always want to be on top, always in control, riding him like getting him off was just one more thing she had to be perfect at-

Shit.

He folded his hands in his lap.

It was that fucker Cid's fault for dressing her like that anyway, fucking old perv.

Squall hopped down with a dull thud, still glaring at him.

"What about me, Instructor? Got a get-better kiss for me?"

She turned to Dr. Kadowaki with an exasperated look. "What's the damage this time?"

"Not much more than what you see. Busted-up nose, black eye-nothing too serious this time. Seifer has a few strained tendons in his left arm-"

"I know a way you could make me feel better, Instructor." He leered at her.

Kadowaki smacked him across the back of his head. "Don't interrupt me, boy. And stop looking at her like she's a piece of meat."

He pulled the wad of cotton from his nostril, dabbing cautiously at it to be sure the bleeding had finally stopped. He threw the soaked lump into the trash bin on his right then stood up, crowding her personal space exactly the way he knew she hated.

Quistis met his eyes coldly.

It always amused him that she was not afraid of him-he could squish her like a bug if he wanted to, and yet she stood there all blue death stare and crossed arms, like if it came down to a fight between them she had equal odds riding on her emerging the victor. Trepe had balls, at least, Seifer would give her that-she always had, even as a child. When he broke the other children's toys, they ran away to tell Matron, crying all the way, but Quistis-

Quistis usually broke something on him, his pride or his nose; she had blasted them both at one point or another during the childhood she did not remember.

It was probably because she was at least a little bat shit crazy-she had to be, to not want him. Pretty much every other female at Garden did.

He leaned in close, letting her feel his breath on her cheeks, enjoying the way those lips twitched, just a little, when he got right up next to them, close enough to touch almost. "See you back in class? Maybe with the next button down unbuttoned?" He indicated her blouse with a flick of finger point that made her jump. "I can't quite see everything when you lean across your desk."

He was laughing when Dr. Kadowaki hauled him away by his collar.

* * *

><p>Orphanage<p>

Centra

Present Day

Mid-afternoon formed an arch of brilliant sunglow over his head.

Seifer squinted up at it, watching nebulous cloud layer shred apart in thin layers like cotton candy.

He was smiling.

He could feel it, and he wore the expression oddly, like a tailored suit he had outgrown, short at the cuffs and tight across the shoulders.

Quistis' buttons had always been a joy to push; he had always liked that he was one of the few that could shatter her composure, the vaunted minority that could get a rise out of her tightly-reined poise.

Come to think of it, he was probably the only one.

She was too controlled, too put-together, and even as a child he had loved throwing himself up against that wall she constructed just as carefully as the castles she left strewn along the waterline, just to see if he could break it. He was usually successful to some degree or another, and the punishments-Quistis' fist in his gut, Matron's gentle scolding-were entirely worth seeing her crumble before him.

He'd tried to fracture the world the same way, only this time she had thwarted him.

For a long time, Seifer had not been sure whether he was grateful to her for that-

Or whether he hated her.

He had spent a lot of time hating her, wasting the bitterness it turned out he would need for far worse things on his former instructor, first because she had forgotten him, and later because she had liked prissy little Squall better.

He leaned back on his elbows, Hyperion beside him on the sand, the sun caressing his face in a stroke of lover's soft touch, his eyes blinking the shadows of playing children from them.

If he concentrated, he could see his mother in their midst, playfully chasing and splashing and swinging, spinning him around and around by the hands, and he was laughing, he was shrieking-_matron stop I'm dizzy no don't do that _please_ matron don't let her do that anymore don't let her hurt us anymore-_

Seifer squeezed his eyes shut very hard for a moment, and then flipped them back open.

The sun was still there, but the children were gone.

His mother was gone.

She was the only one who had loved him, and she had left him here alone on this beach that crawled with her shadows, the ones that kept trying to pry up the layer of protective casing that was his skull, so they could leak down into his brain where they would sit like poison, eating him alive.

He didn't want to be eaten alive anymore. He didn't want to burn anymore, while the world went on around him not caring that her eyes chewed his heart like fire.

Seifer looked down at his hands, scribbles of old scar tissue decorating them like children's crayon artwork.

He used to think life was a short dive into deep shit, and once upon a time, Seifer had been all right with that.

Once upon a time he had almost sort of relished that, almost sort of _wanted _it; the shit was the sacrifices he would need to make, the monsters that might eat him, and he had yearned for them all, these inconsequential stumbling blocks along his road of fairytale whimsy. His glory was waiting at the end of that road, after all.

And now Seifer Almasy was nothing but a coward, nothing but a shivering, weak little _queer _who could not creep that final half a centimeter forward over the cliff edge if his life depended on it. Because now that pulse wave of excrement ocean was his mother's eyes, reeling him in like the fucking fish that knows it's going to be eaten when it reaches the end, but can't do a damn thing about it.

Now the boy with no fear, the reckless man child who had no caution, was scared of everything.

Shadowy corners and slumber that brought nightmares, and even sun-warmed beaches that sounded like children's laughter.

But mostly, mostly this terrified man who was still part boy, deep down, was scared of losing a little girl's blue, blue eyes, even if they never looked at him the way he wanted them to.

Mostly, he was frightened of not having the woman's soft smile, even if it wasn't his.

A screen door banged behind him, and Seifer turned around in time to see Quistis stumble down the front steps, sprawling in the sand at their base.

He gained his feet in an instant, Hyperion in his hand. "What the fuck happened?" he demanded, trying not to look like he was hurrying as he ambled toward her, his gunblade across one shoulder.

She did not look up at him, her hair falling half out of the twist she had wrapped it up in that morning at the Deling City train station.

"Quistis?" He crouched next to her. What the fuck was going on?

She had lost her glasses when she fell, and he picked them up off the sand, extending them to her as she hunched there with her fingers holding fistfuls of sand like talon-clutched prey.

He jiggled them slightly, and when she still did not look at him, he set them down with a frown.

"Hey." He pulled her up by one shoulder, and what he saw in her face made him recoil, made him lurch back and fall over onto his ass with a thump.

He lost his grip on Hyperion.

It hit the beach next to him with a quiet thud, spraying granules of sand that stung his eyes.

She was crying. Not noisily or messily or inconsolably-silently, with the subtle shoulder heaves he could remember scraping that carved headboard long after his mother left his room, her face tight-wound with the grief he felt punch his own chest.

What the hell did he do? What the fuck did he _say_?

When Rinoa cried, that had always been easily handled; he'd just had to stand there with the lapels of his coat in her hands while she sobbed herself out against his chest, giving an occasional pat on the back here and there just so she would know he wasn't watching some other girl's tits bob past.

Which sometimes he had been.

But this-

This, Seifer did not know how to fix. If he touched her, if he held her-he wanted to, fuck did he want to, because this was _killing _him, a slow painful cancer death in front of his mother's home-she might break him over her knee.

She might hate him, for seeing her like this.

He'd rather let his mother rape his soul, dry-bleed his humanity all over again.

Quistis sat back on her heels, wiping her eyes, and he dropped the hand he'd tentatively extended toward her.

He forgot sometimes that it was possible she was the most sensitive out of any of the old orphanage gang.

She'd always just hid it better, fussing over them all, mothering them all, caring too much and for all the wrong people.

Slowly, Quistis gathered the shards of her shattered composure diligently back up, piecing them all back together one at a time until she'd re-built that careful wall between her eyes and the rest of the world, the one that revealed only the parts she wanted on display, the woman she was supposed to be-serene and faultless and always rigidly in control.

She slid her glasses back on, dusting them on her shirt first, meeting his eyes like she dared him to say a word. "Cid is-" Quistis cleared her throat. "…Not well. I just don't-"

She didn't want to go back into the house alone.

He didn't want to go into that fucking place at all.

Seifer stood up slowly, collecting Hyperion on his way up, slipping it into the loop of harness he wore across both shoulders, so that his weapon sat at a side angle across his back that terminated at the point of his left hip.

The lighthouse stared back at him through the malignant eye slits of its dirty windows.

His mother's lips laughed at him from somewhere behind them, ghost arcs of red like blood that kissed and sucked and loved and hated him.

He could see the shadows that would come for him tonight even from here.

Seifer grabbed Quistis roughly by one arm and hauled her back to her feet.

"Come on." he said brusquely, preceding her into the house that still smelled like his mother and her cookies; when his boot struck the raised lip of carpeted foyer, it sent a ripple like skipping rock over pond surface through the whole thing, and for just a moment, he saw it all through the eyes of boy Seifer again.

Bright throw rugs and fresh cuts of garden-picked flowers, curving prettily over vase rims of stained glass-

Quistis on her stomach with a book open in front of her, chin propped in her little hands-

Wall hangings of sloppy child painting, tacked up everywhere-

His mother waved at him from the kitchen.

_-seifer there are cookies come have one ok want to hear another story-_

Her eyes were open and doe-like and corner-crinkled just like boy Seifer remembered, and now he could feel his throat burning. It went up in the flames that torched his self-control, and if it hadn't been for Trepe standing right there next to him, Seifer wasn't at all sure he wouldn't have begun to weep like a little fucking girl.

* * *

><p>Irvine slouched in the chair he had sequestered from the busy ant hive of scrambling activity his girlfriend inspired in her frightened minions, and pulled his hat down over his eyes.<p>

Maybe if Selphie thought he was sleeping, she wouldn't make him help.

He highly, highly doubted that, but it was worth a try.

The three-day-long final push to make everything 'absolutely, fantabulously perfect' for the Spring Festival was officialy in full swing today, which meant the next seventy-two hours of his life would be a veritable ninth circle of hell from which there was no escape.

In years past, when he had noisily contemplated blowing his head off with Exeter while grumpily braiding together the paper daisy chains she had ordered him to make, Selphie had just cheerfully informed him that death was not a reprieve-people who killed themselves during Spring Festival got hauled back by the short and curlies if she wasn't done with them, and put on floor scrubbing duty. With their toothbrushes.

He believed her. If anyone had the strength of will to drag potential slaves back from the afterlife, it was Selphie Tilmitt.

Irvine surveyed Garden's spacious ballroom from underneath his hat.

Its transformation was already half underway, giving the room a sort of chaotic, bi-polar appearance, one side splashed in the color of new emerging life, paper mache flowers and twisting vine tendrils hugged by the glittering border of receding snow line Selphie had fashioned from pillow stuffing, the other still barren. It would look amazing once it was all finished-it always did. She got her results, one way or another.

It was just that the method used to procure them generally ended in a sudden rash of PTSD-induced nightmares that kept Dr. Kadowaki's hands full for weeks afterward.

Hyne only knew why he dated her sometimes.

Irvine watched her flounce past with that damned clipboard, her cute little pink sundress bouncing with each step she took, and he smiled in spite of himself, carefully nudging his hat down lower so she could not see it.

There was a capacity for kindness and forgiveness that went on inside of her forever, and it was that which made him love her. With the most reason to hate him out of everyone, she had been the first to forgive Seifer Almasy his sins; Seifer, she had pointed out to him with the grave perception that always surprised him long after he knew she was capable of it, was probably more of a victim than any of them. Ultimecia had stolen his own mother's face to lure him in, make him dance to a tune that wasn't his own anymore, after all. Irvine could only guess at what he had endured under that bitch's control.

But he was still an asshole, just as he had been long before the war, just as he had been years and years ago back at that orphanage, tormenting and stealing and breaking just because he could, because other people's suffering made him happy. There was a part of Irvine that wondered if Seifer's role in the Second Sorceress War wasn't nearly as involuntary as most of the world assumed it to have been, if there wasn't a part of him that had _enjoyed _every life he'd taken, every innocence he'd shattered.

His ambitions had always been simple and straight-forward even as a child: storm the castle, slay the dragon. Save the princess.

Get the glory.

And that was all he had been trying to do wasn't it, with his boot against the neck of the world? Glory could still be his if the princess didn't need to be saved, if the princess was, in fact, the dragon he was supposed to slay-

If the castle did not need to be stormed but conquered. It all circled back around to the same result in the end, the notoriety he had always yearned for, the fame he had spent long rainy evenings describing to them all.

The world would know his name, Seifer insisted, and it did, it always would, and it was that more than the damsel in distress or the corpse of sword-cut monster that he had always wanted, Irvine suspected. He had always thought he needed to be the hero for people to remember him, because it was the protaganist that rose like a star in all the stories Matron read to them, and the villains that died most horribly.

They had all grown up to a different reality, to a truth where sometimes the stories were swapped, sometimes the fairytale didn't happen because the beautiful princess was not rescued after all, was left to rot and wither and helplessly cry in her locked-away tower-

Because somewhere along the way her knight got twisted.

Somewhere along the road, her hero stumbled and came back up warped by ambition and promises the princess made with lips that did not belong to her anymore.

And she did not live happily ever after. She died a felon's death on her knees while her fractured, defective knight got to keep going.

He did not live happily ever after either, but he lived, and sometimes that was the happiest ending anyone could hope for.

Sometimes that was the best a soldier could hope for.

"Irvy!"

He looked up with a sigh, sliding his hat back. Shoulda' taken a cue from Dincht and fled Garden for the day, ostensibly to entertain Ellone, although really because he was just a chickenshit who didn't want to face the wrath of Selphie the Blood Soul when he refused to help decorate. Not that refusal was really an option with her, no matter what-he was pretty sure he'd spotted Angelo trotting past earlier with something in her mouth that looked suspiciously like one of those Hyne-damned daisy chains.

"Yes, darlin'?" His girlfriend had Quistis by one hand, and was currently in the process of dragging the young woman along behind her, a child yanking her mother toward the candy shop.

Irvine picked himself up out of his slouch.

Quistis looked awful. Oh, she was still gorgeous aesthetically speaking of course, but her beauty had the dull shine of neglected china now, a grandmother's prized set put away misused and chipped to gather dust in the cabinet where it would sit unused for years. Exhaustion killed the glow in her pretty eyes and the color in her cheeks, just-showered hair hanging limp and dark around the pale face that scared him to see it, and he noticed again that she was still too Hyne-damned skinny, like she wasn't eating properly.

Squall put too much on her. They all did, and she just kept taking it, one heaping brick load at a time, shouldering their problems and their little dramas and their Quisty-what-do-I-do-now complaints with that patient mother's smile of hers, solving them all as efficiently as she did everything.

One day, it was going to kill her.

He smiled fondly at her, and she returned it tiredly. "All done with your little side mission, Quisty?"

"Yes. Unfortunately, it didn't go…exactly as planned to say the least. Cid didn't have the information I needed."

Irvine shrugged and slung his arm around her shoulders, giving her a subtle squeeze that made her smile up at him again, more brightly this time. "Way it goes sometimes. Dincht an' me were on this mission one time a while back that…well, let's just say I ain't gonna' mention details, but everything all sorta' went to shit, and by the time it was all over, Dincht was missin' his pants again, and I had an ass tattoo of his face that took me ten Hyne-damned sessions of laser removal to get rid of. Not even sure how it got there in the first place."

Quistis laughed, vibrating his arm against her neck.

"All right, Selph, I know your just dyin' to put us to work, so hit us with it."

"Ok! Quisty, you're on refreshment duty, which means grabbing one of these lists here," She proffered a sheet of paper from her clipboard with a flourish and handed it to her friend, "and checking through all those boxes over there, see? Then you just mark them off on this list, and when you're done, bring it back to me, 'kay?"

Resignedly, Quistis took the piece of paper. She knew as well as he did that to decline would only end in the kind of world-destroying explosion only Selphie was capable of, the glitter and hearts and rainbow of kittens most strangers assumed was all there was to her personality peeling aside to reveal rabid Snow Lion. Sugar-spun cloudless sunshine-that was the exterior she presented with the flip of her hair and the twinkle of her eyes and the eyeball sear of her clothing choices, but Irvine knew that underneath that was a layer of drill instructor harpy with a proficiency for unconventionally creative torture.

He could still remember an incident involving Zell, a glitter stick and her nunchaku that had given both young men nightmares for weeks.

"Irvy, you supervise the punch bowl, ok?"

Quistis raised an eyebrow, mirroring the twitch of confused expression he could feel on his own face.

"Uh, Selphie, darlin,' I think it'll be just fine if no one's standin' there to babysit it."

"No, silly! It's gotta' be put together, and I want to make sure nobody screws it up-I had to special order it from Galbadia. It's gonna' be awesome! It's a fountain shaped like a Ruby Dragon, right? And you pull its tail and whoosh!" She gestured wildly with her arms. "It shoots punch at you like a big flame! Neat, huh?"

Actually, it sounded potentially blinding, but he just nodded.

He and Quistis shared a sympathetic look. "See ya' on the other side, Quisty." Irvine tipped his hat to her and then trotted off at his girlfriend's heels, whistling to himself.

* * *

><p>Quistis made another checkmark, sighed, and set her pen down.<p>

Her hand was cramping.

She shook it listlessly, bringing the other one up to cradle her cheek, letting it slide all the way up to crease her eye.

Staring down at the sheet of paper Selphie had given her until words began to blur and drip and crawl from the page, Quistis did not know what to think.

She did not know how to _feel_. There was a hole like black gravity well inside of Quistis Trepe, pulling her back down into swirling nightmare visions of Cid Kramer and the leftover skeleton man that was all she had left of her father, frail hunchback spine-bent and broken by the death of his wife.

He was like death personified, grim reaper without his scythe, just pathetic and not daunting now.

Even Seifer, pereptually unaffected, glowering Seifer Almasy, had recoiled at the sight of him.

His arm where it grazed hers shivered with the flinch that cringed through his whole body, and then his eyes went hard again, and she wondered if she'd imagined it all.

She wondered if she'd imagined his hand held out toward her as she sobbed out all her grief on that patch of shingle-layered sand in front of her mother's home, offering-

Offering what? What could Seifer Almasy possibly have to give her? Scorn? Derision?

A warm lap and a warmer hand-

She did not want those things from him. She wanted them, as she supposed most people did eventually, but certainly not from him.

Certainly not from the boy who used to pull her hair and hide worms in her bed and mock her with that curl of sneer he wore so well. Certainly not from the man who'd smashed hearts and hymens alike, the one who had survived when her mother did not, the one who had not deserved to live but had gotten to keep his head anyway.

Quistis blinked.

She did not know where that thought came from. She poked at it now, probing the thin insulation of faint bitterness it wore, and stabbing through into festering resentment.

Seifer Almasy had lived and Matron had died. Cruel, narcissistic Seifer had made it, and her mother, her kind, beautiful mother with the soft smile, the one that made everything better without even trying-

She'd spit red from the petering fountain of her neck stump, and slumped over in the slow motion death scene that was a constant re-run across the backs of her eyelids most nights.

It was a cruel thought.

She did not want him dead; she did not particularly like or respect or trust him, but she did not want him dead.

She just-

She just wished they had saved her mother instead.

Quistis picked up her pen again, watching light like polish chase itself across the thin cylinder.

Numbers and letters and cheery smiley faces began to creep from the page again, and she rubbed her eyes with a sigh.

* * *

><p>His hands shook.<p>

They had not stopped shaking for the last hour.

They had not stopped shaking since Cid Kramer, stooped over in that convex slump of broken old man.

He sat on the edge of his bed staring dumbly down at wadded-up paper knot, crumpled into the shape of his fist.

_"Seifer? I didn't realize you were here too. It's good to see you." His father's lips twitched like fucking worms, and he tried not to throw up. _

_"…Yeah."_

_Cid folded hands like rodent-picked joints of decomposed corpse claw, and tried to smile up at him. "I have…Edea wrote you a letter." He adjusted his glasses. "I've been holding onto it all this time, thinking you weren't ready for it, that you wouldn't want it…but I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and it isn't up to me to make that decision. My wife…" His voice hitched. "She wanted you to have it for a reason." _

_His mother…his mother had written to him?_

_The fist that had not let up from his throat since he'd walked into that fucking house tightened. _

_Quistis glanced over at him, and all he could do, all he could fucking pray for, was that his face didn't read like a goddamned book, everything just out-in-the-fucking-open naked for her to see. _

_He didn't want the pity she might try to give him. He didn't want those fucking eyes staring at him like she might understand, like she might actually give a fucking shit._

_She didn't understand, could _never _understand. She might sympathize just a little, because he was a part of her childhood, an inevitable piece of her life whether she liked it or not, but she did not really _care_._

_Not the way he needed someone to. _

_She helped Cid up from his chair, limbs unfolding with pops like grave-risen cadaver, climbing back up over crumbled burial ground lip. _

_Seifer stepped aside so his father would not graze him as he passed. He saw Quistis swallow, saw her fight for composure, and there was that fucking urge to hold her back again, the one he had to strangle like his mother, wrapped in the straining slashes of white that turned out to be his fingers, the ones he was not quite sure he was in control of anymore. _

_He hadn't been in control of anything for a long fucking time. Not his goddamned fingers or his soldier's nature of mindless killer, and certainly not his fucking feelings. _

_His mother had taken that all away from him, and Seifer had never been quite sure how to get it back. _

_The sheet of paper Cid came back with crackled and whispered with each arthritic tweak of his hand, and he handed it to Seifer with a smile just as shaky. "She loved you very, very much, Seifer. The woman Ultimecia made her into…that wasn't who she was. It was…" His voice trailed off to a raspy murmur. "her greatest regret that you were caught up in the middle of it all. She was…she was just trying to protect her children." _

She didn't protect _me_. _Seifer thought bitterly, but hadn't he always insisted he did not need it? Hadn't he always told her-_

-matron I'm gonna' grow up real big and strong so I won't need anyone's help I'm not a _baby _like the rest of them-

_He hadn't _asked _for her fucking protection. He hadn't _needed _anyone to save him, goddammit. _

_Quistis was looking at him. _

_Seifer blinked rapidly, because for just a moment, staring down at that creased and blotched and corner-torn letter, his eyes had begun to blur, and he wasn't sure if it was from the simple adjustment of his vision trying to focus in that shittily-lit death room-_

_Or if he was trying not to cry. _

_"Please read it, Seifer." Cid croaked, seating himself again slowly, one half inch drop at a time. "She wanted you to."_

_They walked in silence back to the car._

_Quistis unlocked his door without a word._

_He was still staring down at that goddamned letter, creased neatly in half and pressed down along the fold with the line of fingernail that had sealed it._

_Seifer could still see the faint crayon mark of red left behind, a thin strip like lurid blood along the pleat. _

_"Are you going to read it?" she asked quietly. _

_His head came up._

_He blinked her face back into focus._

_"No." he said, and smashed it with a loud crunch, the shapes of his fingers impressed into striations of indentation along its surface. _

_Seifer threw it down beside the front passenger tire, and got into the car. _

And somehow, someway it had ended up back in his hand.

Somehow, someway something had conspired inside him to pick it up again at the last minute, to slip it inside his pocket while she was not watching.

When he slid Hyperion out from behind his shoulders to transfer it to the back seat, he used that split second redirection of her attention to finger his mother's last words to him. He brushed and stroked and pinched along the edges like he could absorb everything through the burning nerve ends of his fingertips, like a simple swish of touch could hardwire everything right to his brain and be done with it all, and then he let go, promising himself he didn't give a shit what it said.

There was nothing she could say to make it all better. When he was a kid, when he was a stupid little fucking child, it might have worked; then she had always known just what to tell him, just what reassurance he needed to make his world perfect again, but now-

Now, there was nothing that could do that. There was no_one _who could do that, least of all her.

He fingered one corner, brimming over with hate and guilt and regret, a bitter old man picking the scars of old mistakes, and he wished-

He wished there was someone here to hold his fucking hand. Something. _Anything_. Seifer Almasy was not supposed to feel that way, was not supposed to _need _that way, but he could not fucking do this alone. He could not sit here holding his mother's last dictation in his shaking, nerveless hand, desperate to see, afraid to know.

The shadows would get him.

They'd pour off the walls and steal out from his bed, smoke through his eye sockets and coil up through his toes.

They were everywhere, after all.

_-the shadows were talking to him again and they were telling him seifer kill your mother go ahead do it we won't tell no one will see-_

The fuck did he expect? What was this now, one of the shitty fairytales he had crapped himself over as a kid, the ones he had been absolutely, positively certain were real? Was he the goddamned damsel in distress now, waiting for his fucking hero?

Seifer wrenched the letter open.

_Seifer-_

_I asked the prison warden for this paper and this pen because I needed to write this for you…and now I don't know what to say. There aren't any words for the things I've done to you, the things I made you do._

_They're killing me today, did you know that? That's why they're letting me write this. I heard they're letting you go, that you've been pardoned, and I'm so happy for you. None of this was your fault, and I couldn't have stood it if it was you instead of me. _

_I took on the sorceress' burden because I wanted to protect all of you, because I was afraid she'd take one of you instead…and then I did nothing but hurt you, didn't I? I didn't protect you at all._

_Seifer, 'I'm sorry' does not even begin to cover how absolutely remorseful I am, but it's all I have to offer, and I hope…I hope one day when you remember me, you remember just your mother, and not her. _

_I hope one day, you can put this all behind you. I hope one day you can stop hating me. You always said you would be a knight and rescue princesses and kill monsters, do you remember? I think about the little boy that used to say things like that everyday, and I hope he's not dead. I hope…somewhere inside of you, there's still some of that innocence left, because that little boy was precious. That little boy was going to be a hero, and I made him, I made you-_

_I'm sorry. _

_I tried to stop her, but she was always too strong for me, but you-you defied her in little ways, didn't you? You never completely gave up, even long after I did. _

_Do you remember the stories I used to read to you? The way they ended? There was always a happily ever after, wasn't there? I read them to you because I loved them too, because I guess there's a part of me that never grew up and stopped believing in them. _

_Sometimes, I still believe, in spite of everything, that there can be happily ever afters. And I hope…I hope that you get one, Seifer. _

_Please, please forgive me._

_I love you. _

Seifer threw her letter across the room.

He dented the wall with his fist and the door with his boot.

He flung over his nightstand and reared back to shatter his bathroom mirror with an arc of kick that followed all the way through to the wall behind.

He smashed his computer monitor and then that fucking window, the one just as broken and frozen in place as he, and then he fell facedown across his bed and did something he had not done for a long, long time.

He cried himself to sleep, clutching fistfuls of blanket in off and on twitches of seizure convulsion.

This time, his dreams unfolded like the fairytales his mother used to read to him.

Once upon a time there lived a woman and her son, and they loved each other very much. They lived in a palace by the sea with many other children, and everyone was very happy together until one day an evil witch stole the woman away.

The son did not see his mother again for a long time, and he was very sad. One by one, the other children grew up and left him, until he was all alone in that palace by the sea, waiting for his mother to come home. He waited and waited and waited, but she never came, and finally, the boy had no choice but to grow up too.

He grew up strong and brave and handsome, and his mother would have been very proud of him. He fought monsters and saved beautiful princesses from their towers, and many kings offered him their daughter's hands.

But the son did not want them, and so he set off into the world to look for his mother, and for years and years and years, he wandered, until one day he came across the castle of the evil witch who had stolen the woman.

The witch had put her under a spell so that she did not even remember him anymore, and in his grief and anger, the boy killed his mother, who fell dying into his arms, free at last of the witch's terrible powers.

He wept bitter tears onto her face, and where they touched, they healed, and the woman's cold corpse stirred in her son's arms, smiling up at him.

When the witch saw what had happened, she flew into a horrible fury, tearing the castle down around them with her magic, but the boy did not run, and he faced her in a battle that poets re-told for many years.

When it was all over, the witch lay dead at his feet, and the woman and her son embraced happily, and then, for the first time in years, they went home together to their palace by the sea.

And they lived happily ever after.


	13. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

Balamb Garden

Balamb

Seifer staggered like a drunk into the bathroom the next morning, cutting his feet on the shards of glass left in the wake of his destruction the night before.

He let cold shower water wash ribbon curls of blood down the drain, watching them go, watching them swirl, twirling like dancers in the space between his toes.

He did not let himself think.

He did not _want _to think-thinking brought memories, and he wanted to burn all his recollections away, until Seifer Almasy was nothing but blank artist's canvas waiting to be filled up again.

The shower did not shut off for a long time.

He stood there blinking jet streams of chlorinated sting from his eyes, letting through only the things he still needed to function, to live. How to breathe and step and reach, how to not care or feel or give even the slightest fucking shit.

He wanted to talk to Quistis.

Seifer rubbed his hands across his face, lingering over the scar Leonhart had given him years ago.

One more fuck up, in a whole goddamned string of them.

He twisted the knobbed protrusion of shut-off valve, and stepped out.

In the last few serrated-lipped pieces of mirror still clinging to the frame now recessed into the wall from the blow it had taken, Seifer's eyes glared back at him.

He stared at haphazard crayon marks of sleepless bloodshot, and picked his lips up off his teeth in a sneer.

He needed to pull it the fuck together. He needed to give up on the whole pathetic, sniveling notion of his love for that woman, the one that kept whispering hope to him in boy Seifer's voice, the one that kept telling him about the fairytales and the way they ended.

He did not _care _about the goddamned fairytales anymore.

They were all just a bunch of shit on a page, lies penned for profit. Rotting excrement fed to stupid little children, who'd eat it up like fucking cake.

He was not boy Seifer anymore. He was not stupid enough to still believe in those endings, and his mother should not have been either.

It did not surprise him that she was.

He hated her for it, he fucking _hated _her and her goddamned stories and her cookies and the smile she used to give him from the porch swing, and he hated this fucking _letter_-

Seifer kicked the crumpled skeleton of it as he stormed back into his bedroom, the towel around his waist dripping water in splotches of raindrop that smeared ink.

He dressed without really paying attention to what he was putting on, not caring if his pants matched his fucking shirt or even if he was wearing the same socks; it was early anyway, hours before first period classes, and there probably wouldn't even be anyone around to notice Garden's resident war criminal wearing mispaired socks.

Seifer jammed his arms through the sleeves of his trench coat and then swept out the door, stocking cap dangling from one hand, twitching against his palm as he stormed down the hallway.

It was fucking cold in here; couldn't those idiots keep the goddamned heater up and running?

He pulled his cap down over his ears, fuming.

Too early for breakfast, and he'd forgotten Hyperion in his haste to get the hell out of that place, which meant unless he wanted to battle training center T-Rexaurs with his bare hands, he didn't have a whole lot of options left in regards to things to do.

He found himself heading for the library. It was locked, but a quick swipe of the I.D. card he discovered in his left front pocket swished it open before him, and then he was among the soft moon glow of humming computer terminals, wondering what the hell he was doing here.

Seifer didn't really need to ask himself that. He knew what he was doing here.

He was deliberately disobeying that voice, the one telling him to give up on her, the one trying to convince him that it did not matter what he did-how many poems he sent or jokes he told, how many times he made her laugh or cheered her up-

To Quistis Trepe, he would always just be an insect.

The man on the other end of the computer, the other side of the vast world globe that was the internet-that man was an illusion.

Trepe probably thought he was some emo little artist, sensitive poet wannabe, soulful, beautiful Prince Charming.

All the things he was not.

All the things he would never and could never be.

He sat down in front of the nearest computer anyway, flipping the tail of his coat out from beneath him so it puddled in the chair at his back.

He stared at the blinking screen for a long time.

_They're killing me today, did you know that? That's why they're letting me write this. _

_Seifer, 'I'm sorry' does not even begin to cover how absolutely remorseful I am, but it's all I have to offer, and I hope…I hope one day when you remember me, you remember just your mother, and not her. _

_I hope one day, you can put this all behind you. I hope one day you can stop hating me. _

_Sometimes, I still believe, in spite of everything, that there can be happily ever afters. And I hope…I hope that you get one, Seifer. _

Seifer lifted his fingers to the keys. He did not care what images she crafted, what impossible standards she built up in her head that he could never live up to-

He just did not want to be alone right now.

* * *

><p><strong>quistis_trepe_14: So are you ever going to tell me who you are?<strong>

**3877SA: why don't you let me ask the questions today?**

**quistis_trepe_14: What do you mean? **

**3877SA: i mean you're always bombarding me with all kinds of crap; favorite color, favorite memory, first time you took a shit that wasn't in your pants…**

**quistis_trepe_14: …I'm pretty sure I didn't ask the last one.**

**quistis_trepe_14: What do you want to know?**

**3877SA: let's start off with the same stuff. favorite color?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Green. **

**3877SA: interesting. why? because it reminds you of something? your favorite shirt, somebody's eyes?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Not really. I just think it's a pretty color.**

**3877SA: fine. favorite memory? **

**quistis_trepe_14: I believe I already mentioned it, but setting off fireworks on the beach when I was a child. **

**3877SA: favorite music?**

**quistis_trepe_14: A band or a particular song?**

**3877SA: just what kind of stuff do you like? shitty emo rock, chick stuff…**

**quistis_trepe_14: What, exactly, constitutes 'chick stuff'? **

**3877SA: you know, all that whiny i-need-a-boyfriend crap or my-boyfriend-left-me-for-someone-with-larger-breasts or these-pants-make-me-look-fat-i-need-a-boyfriend-to-tell-me-they-don't, etc. etc.**

**quistis_trepe_14: I listen to instrumental music, mostly. I love the sound of the violin. And it takes actual talent and hard work to master, and doesn't depend on an over-revealing outfit and an auto-tuner to trick the general population into believing they are listening to something halfway decent.**

**3877SA: favorite pet? favorite ice cream flavor? favorite pair of panties?**

**quistis_trepe_14: The orphanage where I grew up had a dog for a while. We ran him ragged between the six of us, but he was entirely too patient with all of us and let us do anything we wanted. Chocolate, which might seem a little cliché as a female, but there's a reason it's a woman's best friend (I never really did buy into the whole diamonds-are-a-woman's-best-friend-far too expensive and bland to look at on top of it,) and a black pair of-**

**quistis_trepe_14: Nice try.**

**3877SA: damn. really, go on. do they have lace along the top? any bows or hearts or anything like that? honestly, no detail is too small.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Actually, I am a firm believer in granny panties. They are comfortable, don't hinder you the way something worn solely for the aesthetic appeal of it would, and they're very roomy. That's come in handy on a mission or two before.**

**3877SA: holy fuckin hyne are you telling me you smuggle, what, grenades in there?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Of course not. That would be dangerous. Just small things that might come in handy-extra ammunition for mission partners, smoke bombs, potions, that sort of thing.**

**3877SA: i get the impression you're mocking me. **

**quistis_trepe_14: What would lead you to that conclusion?**

**3877SA: man's intuition. **

**quistis_trepe_14: I was not aware such a thing existed. I've been under the impression that 'intuition' so far as a man is concerned is the natural instinct telling him where every set of breasts in the room is at all times. **

**3877SA: it's capable of other things, that's just usually what we end up using it for. **

**3877SA: it's important to be aware of your surroundings. says so in the seed manual.**

**quistis_trepe_14: I don't believe that's what it was talking about. **

**3877SA: so, quistis, tell me something.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Yes?**

**3877SA: whatever you want to. something from your childhood; you said you don't remember all of it-what **_**do **_**you remember?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Mostly, I remember a boy I grew up with. I assume because he's probably in most of my memories-he always had to be in the middle of everything. He was one of those children that constantly needed attention on him. **

**3877SA: what do you remember about him?**

**quistis_trepe_14: That he was a bully who only wanted something as long as everyone else did, and then he was done with it. Once whoever the toy belonged to lost interest in trying to get it back, he didn't want it anymore. He didn't change much even after he grew up.**

**3877SA: what, you don't have any good memories of him?**

**quistis_trepe_14: Some. I sometimes tell myself that there was nothing good about him, but I think…I think that's just to make myself feel better about the way I failed him.**

**3877SA: what do you mean?**

**quistis_trepe_14: It's a very long story. But as his instructor, I was supposed to guide him, and somewhere along the way he got very lost; I have to accept partial responsibility for that.**

**quistis_trepe_14: He made his own decisions, but maybe if I had done something different, paid more attention to him…I don't know. Maybe things would have turned out differently. **

**3877SA: wishes are assholes. everyone's got one, and they're all just a bunch of shit.**

**quistis_trepe_14: The saying is actually about opinions. And that's kind of a pessimistic view to take, don't you think? There's nothing wrong with having hope sometimes, even if it's unrealistic. It gives some people a reason to keep going, the same way faith does.**

**3877SA: i just don't see the point. i could pray to hyne for a giant purple pony and a bigger dick (not that i need one just so you know, i'm just using that as an example,) but i'm pretty sure i'm not going to wake up tomorrow with thirteen inches and a horse in my dorm room.**

**3877SA: and some people…not you?**

**quistis_trepe_14: I guess I don't really see the point either. I used to…**

**quistis_trepe_14: I used to think these stories my mother used to tell me were true-fairytales about princesses and white horses and knights in shining armor and happy endings, and I believed them for longer than I'm proud to admit. I always thought it was stupid that the princess didn't just save herself, but it was still nice to think that a handsome young man would show up just in case you needed him (or in case his horse became a necessary avenue for escape if the dragon you were trying to kill turned out to be uncooperative in letting you do so,) and I always liked the thought that at the end, everything wrapped neatly up. The heroes lived happily ever after, the villains died (or were 'banished' as my mother used to tell us after reading one story where a woman was trapped in a barrel full of nails and poisonous snakes and rolled into a river, and one of the children I grew up with started to cry,) and everything ended up just as it was supposed to be.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Real life isn't like that, unfortunately.**

**3877SA: sometimes the villains get away with it.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Exactly. And sometimes, the heroes don't always win. Or if they do, they're so broken and traumatized by the time everything is said and done, it isn't much of a happy ending after all.**

**quistis_trepe_14: I'm sorry for the tangent. You were asking me about the boy I was talking about. I have a lot of bad memories of him, but there are a few good ones. If I was sad, he'd bring me things he had found on the beach that day that he thought I might like; shells or an interesting rock, and he'd let me bury him in the sand. I'd form it all into the shape of a mermaid around him, which he didn't like very much-he used to tell me it looked more like a crooked 'peeniz' (he had just learned the word and what it referred to,) but he let me do it anyway, because it made me smile.**

**quistis_trepe_14: I always found it slightly ironic that he would put up with all of that just to make me happy, when more often than not he was the reason I was upset. **

**3877SA: maybe he just wasn't as charming as i am. he didn't know how to express himself.**

**quistis_trepe_14: This from a man who hides behind his computer sending cryptic e-mails instead of romancing a woman out in the open the way a normal person would?**

**3877SA: if you're trying to shame me into telling you who i am, it's not gonna work.**

**quistis_trepe_14: It was worth a try. **

* * *

><p>There were a million more important things he could be doing with his time; towering mounds of paperwork growing alarmingly more pronounced by the day despite Quistis' help, tending to his ill girlfriend who was once more sequestered inside their room throwing up what little lunch he had persuaded her to eat, channel surfing for updates on the increasingly tense political climate between Esthar's government and its citizens-<p>

And instead here he was, sitting in the middle of a ballroom floor with pieces of punch bowl mechanism spread out around him, scurrying activity going on around him like no one even noticed Garden's commander holding up a cylinder of metal tubing that made Quistis cover her mouth and turn away, shoulders trembling.

Squall glared at her. He _knew _what it looked like. Selphie could insist that this was the dragon's 'snout' all she wanted, but he had never encountered a monster with a jaw line that looked so suspiciously similar to a certain part of the male anatomy.

Holding it squeezed between his thighs so he could pound another section into place was not helping any.

He saw Irvine do a double take and then jog off laughing, hooking a thumb back over one shoulder to indicate his source of mirth when Zell loudly demanded to know what the hell he was giggling about.

Zell, looking almost as disgruntled as he felt, was currently in the process of trying to loop garlands of flowers around a very large tree trunk crafted from heavy carboard and streaks of what Squall was convinced could only be the blood of innocents, though Selphie assured him it was just paint.

Just like she'd guaranteed him that he was not wrestling a giant metal penis.

Sometimes he wondered why he had bothered to shift the plating of his lone wolf armor long enough to befriend people like her.

Zell fell off his ladder with a yelp, bringing a tree branch crashing down with him.

"Zell!" Selphie screamed from the other side of the room. "Be careful! Don't break it!"

Squall was close enough to hear Zell mutter something that, had Selphie been close enough to overhear, probably would have resulted in an unceremonious hog-tying courtesy of the garlands his friend had again set to stringing up, and a severe poking with the fluffy pink pen she kept whipping agitatedly around her head like a sword.

He shook his head, looked down at the 'dragon's snout' between his legs again, and set it aside in disgust.

Quistis smiled at him from her burial mound of plastic flowers, hexagonal sprays of lurid color that peeked from her hands and hair and the snarled twist of vine that formed a multihued ligature around her slender legs. She looked tired, he noticed, worn down around the edges, her cheekbones more pronounced than they should have been.

She looked, Squall thought, exactly like he felt.

He helped her untwist the tangle of over-bright green from her legs without saying anything, unbinding Quistis with a flick of his wrist that snapped the whole thing like a whip, freeing her.

"Thank you." She leaned closer under the pretense of gathering up the coil of decorations Selphie had ordered her to sort through. "How is Rinoa doing?"

Squall tried not to sigh. "Not good. Sick."

She sat back on her heels, hands in her lap. "Cid didn't have any idea where Fujin and Raijin went. I thought they might have told him when they left, since he was still in charge at the time, but he didn't know anything. Or…he didn't remember." Quistis looked up from her knotted fingers, frowning at him. "Squall, Cid is not doing well at all. When Seifer and I saw him-"

Squall felt his entire body tense up, every muscle shot through with the killing rage that name invoked in him. "_Seifer_? What was he doing there with you?" he demanded.

"He followed me onto the train. We were stranded overnight in Deling City because of an accident on the tracks near Centra, and the next morning he tagged along to the orphanage. I didn't see the harm in it, if he wanted to come."

"Did you _tell _him?" If Almasy knew about Rinoa they were screwed, they were absolutely _fucked_, because he could not trust that man as far as he could throw him, and if Quistis had inadvertently betrayed them, if she had let something slip-

"Of course not." She looked irritated now. "I understand how important it is to keep this quiet, Squall, and Seifer is the last person I would expect to keep a confidence."

He let the furnace surge of his anger burn down into ashes, and slumped. "I'm…sorry." He pressed a hand to his forehead. "I just-"

He didn't know what to do. This predicament for which he was responsible, this problem he had caused kept him awake at night, kept him tossing and turning and panicking, until he could barely stand it anymore, until he wanted to crawl from this skin he wore like a suit, this body that kept performing all the menial day-to-day tasks he was expected to carry out with the detached interest of a string-hung marrionette.

He felt like Almasy, dancing at the end of her tether, straining at the end of it like a yard-chained dog.

They would kill Rinoa and his child. The woman he loved, the infant he hadn't yet had the chance to, gone forever, burned at the stake like a witch, going up in a hiss of torch flare like the warmth gnawing his heart.

Because he hadn't kept his dick in his pants. Because he hadn't even thought through to the end of all the potential consequences, to the retreating curl of her smoking lashes, and the liquid strings of burning cheek flesh.

They might cut her head off. They might saw down through her bent neck, through layers of black like crow's wing and tendons that snapped back and sputtered blood in a spray like electrical short-out, and he couldn't-

He couldn't even think about it. He couldn't think about it, and yet he could not stop picturing it, could not stop playing every scenario out in detail as precise as though he were seeing it all in front of him, right now.

"Squall?"

Quistis had her hand on his arm.

He stared down at her pale fingers, because they were the only thing he could stand to see.

She was smiling at him again, her wise mother's smile, her insightful older sibling's lip curl that made him want to tell her everything, vomit babbling confession like poison, because there was nothing she could not solve.

But he did not. He did not because there were shadows in her eyes like the ones in his soul, and Squall did not want to be another millstone weighting down that arch of pale neckline.

"Do you want to go get something to eat?" she asked.

He didn't have much of an appetite, but poking suspiciously at something the cafeteria lady assured him was indeed a ham sandwich was far preferable to all of this, at least.

They found the cafeteria almost entirely deserted, likely because most of Garden was either already sequestered in the ballroom performing increasingly demeaning jobs, or actively trying to avoid doing so. Almasy was just exiting as they stepped inside, and he made sure to slam Squall's shoulder with his own as he swept past without saying a word to either of them.

Squall glared after him.

He turned around to find Quistis watching his old rival, a frown joining both eyebrows.

He wondered what she saw when she looked at Almasy. The problematic student she had spent far more time scolding than teaching? A traitor gone unpunished, slipping the hangman's noose when their own mother had not?

Or a broken man, bent in on himself until he snapped, clinging to the shreds of his old identity because it was the only thing he had left?

Squall was not even sure himself what he saw anymore. The old Seifer was still there, still the preening, bullying asshole he had hated since childhood, but now-

Now there was something new. Something darker, something bitterer, something that crawled and slinked like maggots just below the surface, something that had never been there before. There were shards of Ultimecia still left in him, still prickling in spines of poisoned quill along the edges of Seifer Almasy, and during the rare moments Squall did not spend worrying about Rinoa, he wondered what would happen when they went septic.

He eyed Quistis, holding a plastic tray now and leaning over the metal bins displaying that day's lunch choices, trying to find something that was not too horrifying.

The dynamics between Quistis and her old student had not changed for her. Squall could see that easily; there was the same distaste there, broken only occasionally by her inherent sympathy for the boy she had grown up with, the one who had started off with more potential than Garden had seen in some time and then tragically thrown it all away. So what, then, had changed for Seifer? What had altered so significantly inside of him that now when he watched her, it was not with the lust he had used as a cadet to make her uncomfortable, but with something that softened his entire face, something that so radically shifted his features that Squall could not find the war criminal anywhere in that scarred countenance?

Seifer Almasy watched Quistis Trepe the same way Squall knew he stared after Rinoa, and it disconcerted him.

People like Almasy did not fall in love, not with anything other than their own reflections.

Squall reflexively grabbed the tray Quistis offered to him, and gingerly spooned a small dollop of macaroni and cheese into one of the slots. That was the label the jumbled mess of orange blob bore, anyway, though he had his doubts. He selected an apple juice and then followed Quistis to the table she slid behind, giving it a shake to evenly distribute the sediment lurking at the bottom.

The cafeteria door slammed open as he sat down.

"Leonhart! Commander Leonhart!" A cadet Squall did not recognize staggered inside, wheezing. He went to both knees as Squall came to his feet, and Quistis, faster than him, leapt forward to catch the boy before he could face plant. She held him up by the shoulders, and Squall followed the line of her gaze all the way back to the door, where Seifer Almasy stood dwarfing the entire frame, his head nearly grazing the very top section.

"What happened?" she demanded. "What did you do to him?"

"I didn't do a Hyne fucking thing, Instructor." he snapped. "He almost ran me over in the hall. I followed him to see what the hell was going on."

Meaning he had been thinking about beating him up the way he did to most people who stepped on his toes either literally or figuratively, but Squall did not say that aloud. He crouched next to the huddled form in Quistis' arms, the boy's head lolling back against her chest.

"He's not breathing." she said tensely, letting him slide down out of her hold and onto the floor, where she kneeled beside him with both palms spread flat, the distilled glow of Cura spilling out from beneath them.

"Hey!" Seifer snarled. "Kadowaki's got you on casting restriction."

"Be quiet." she told him calmly, her eyes flickering in concentration.

"Are you fucking _stupid_?" Seifer grabbed her by one arm and yanked Quistis roughly to her feet.

"Seifer, stop!"

Squall glanced up to see Almasy encircle both her wrists with his fingers, forming unbreakable manacles that he used to pull her up against his chest where she could not get the leverage to do any physical damage.

"_Seifer_!"

"He's dead, Quistis." Squall told her quietly, looking down into the flaccid yawn of lips like pale rubber, new death pallor whiting out his cheeks.

She stopped struggling, but he noticed Seifer did not let go, keeping her pressed there as long as she would allow him. "What the fuck killed him?"

Fingers of chill brushed his chest, and closed like teeth around his heart.

He did not have a damned clue.

* * *

><p>"A bullet." Dr. Kadowaki snapped the cuffs of her gloves as she peeled them off, tossing both into a nearby trash can lined in biohazard red.<p>

"Where the fuck is it, then?" Seifer, flanking Quistis with both arms across his chest and the scowl she was coming to regard as a permanent fixture, shifted over onto his other foot, bumping her hip with his.

She gave him a frosty look.

He sneered back at her.

"There's no entry or exit wound." Quistis said far more politely, transferring her weight onto her right leg, putting a thin strip of space between the curve of her hip and the warmth of his side. Seifer mirrored her, snugging himself right back up against her with a flicker of smirk that told Quistis he was doing it on pupose just because he knew it bothered her.

She had never met a more impossible man.

"So where, exactly, did the bullet go?" she continued, doing her best to ignore Seifer.

"Right next to his heart. Someone shot him with a hollow point round, which of course are meant to get in there and do as much damage as possible, bouncing around, shredding everything up rather than just blowing a really large hole. He had Curaga cast on him right after it happened, and that sealed everything up, which is why you didn't even notice an entry wound."

"So someone either witnessed this and tried to help him, or-"

"Whoever shot him cured him right afterward, which was why he was able to get all the way to the cafeteria before he died. Adrenaline can also do some interesting things to the human body, and since the bullet didn't actually hit his heart, he was able to keep going for a little while until his internal bleeding killed him."

"Why would someone cure him after shooting him in the chest?" Squall interjected quietly.

"Maybe so they could draw it out. It's what I'd do to you, Pubes." Seifer smiled pleasantly.

Dr. Kadowaki scowled. "Mr. Almasy, be quiet before I stick you over in the corner to think about what an ass you are. Never too old for a time-out." She picked up her clipboard from the corner of her desk, penciling something in on the sheet of paper tacked there. "They may have intentionally been trying to seal the bullet up in him, so there were no signs of violence on his corpse."

"But an autopsy would have shown how he died." Quistis pointed out. "So they couldn't have made it look like some sort of accident."

"Not necessarily." Dr. Kadowaki glanced up from her writing. "Someone cast something I'm still trying to analyze on the bullet before they fired it, and whatever it was was actually in the process of dissolving the bullet fragments when I dug it out of him."

"_Dissolving _it? What could do that?" Quistis adjusted her glasses.

"I'm not sure. Probably something fairly common that reacted oddly with the trace elements in the metal. Whatever it was, they miscalculated when they cast Curaga on him-if they'd used a lower level healing spell, he probably would have died much more quickly and not had time to call attention to himself. He'd have been found eventually wherever he dropped, and an autopsy wouldn't have show anything except heart damage. I'd have written it off as some kind of unknown pre-existing condition."

Ice encapsulated Quistis' heart. "So someone inside Garden just murdered a cadet in cold blood, and attempted to make it look like it was nothing more than a childhood heart condition?" It was a rhetorical question, but a part of her wished someone would chime in with a different answer than the one she already knew to be true. She was ensnared in a particularly vivid dream-that was a far more appealing explanation than the one currently staring up at her from the cold steel slab of sheet-draped death bed she could not look away from.

Quistis felt herself slump a little. Hyne, she was tired.

She saw Seifer's eyes flick toward her for a moment and then quickly move on.

"All right you three, shoo. I've got some more tests to run. Find something less morbid to do with your day."

"Well, that rules out going back to help Selphie." Quistis murmured as they all shuffled out, rubbing at the headache beginning to form behind her temples.

"I need to check on Rinoa." Squall said abruptly. "Quistis, you question Almasy about what he saw."

"I didn't _see _anything, Pubes. Just some little twit running like he had a fucking stick up his ass."

Squall walked off without replying to that.

Quistis stifled a sigh. Enduring the company of Seifer Almasy was not exactly the way she had pictured spending one of her rare days off; she had seen far too much of him in the past few days or so as it was, and she still had not quite gotten over the fact that he had gotten to watch her fall to pieces in front of their childhood home. "Which direction was he coming from, at least?"

"Don't know."

"Well, that's very helpful."

"Well, what'd you fuckin' expect, Trepe?" he snapped. "I don't have eyes in the back of my head."

"Fine; there's no need to be so hostile."

He walked on ahead of her, shoulders stiff.

Against her better judgement, Quistis followed him, keeping pace with his longer stride for several bends of empty hallway before he broke the silence. "Coming back to my place with me or something? You're more than welcome to, Instructor."

"Is something bothering you?"

"Why the hell would you care if it was?"

"Because leaving an angry Seifer Almasy to prowl Garden's halls is a little like letting a Wendigo loose." she replied wryly.

* * *

><p>For one split second of a moment, he wanted to tell her.<p>

He wanted to talk about the boy in the seaside palace with the mother who loved him, and the witch who had stolen her away. He wanted to tell her the boy was tired of being alone, that it was time for the goddamned happy ending his mother had always assured him was out there, the one he would get after he saved the beautiful princess.

He wanted to tell her the ending could only be happy if she was waiting there for him.

But of course he did not, because somewhere along his road to knighthood, Seifer Almasy had dropped his fucking balls, and forgotten to pick them up again.

They parted at the door to his room, the one he could barely stand to walk through, the one he had to enter anyway, because she was watching. She was like those fucking shadows that squirmed off the walls to eat his soul, always there, always judging, always waiting for the inevitable trip, the final fuck-up.

He was tired of watching everyone wait for him to fail.

He was tired of waiting for himself to fail.

He let the door shut rudely in her face.

* * *

><p>An hour later, Seifer went looking for her again.<p>

He was not quite sure why he did it. Seeing her was as much a punishment as an ecstasy, shackled joy that dragged at his heart and his gut. Each tentative smile was the fragile heartbeat of a dying man, fast fading and something he might not, would probably not ever have again. Each eye flicker of reluctant glance scraped his breastbone and skewered his chest, because it had happened, it was there, it was _something_-but it would never be the look she had once given Squall, the kind she would never have for him.

She was in the library where he had expected to find her, chin in her hands, a computer on but unused in front of her.

Seifer stood in the doorway watching her for a long time.

There was something broken about her posture, something…_decimated_ that reminded him of the man staring him back in the mirror each morning, the one he sometimes did not even recognize as Seifer Almasy anymore. It was not a carriage he was used to seeing his old instructor slump over in, and there was a part of him he had to fight off, to wrestle into submission before he let his aching impulsiveness take over.

His recklessness demanded Seifer hold her until she just let him, until she just went flaccid in his embrace and let him prop up that steel core of backbone that was Quistis Trepe, the antitheses of the damsels in distress he had dreamed up when he was a child, when there was nothing but fairytale whimsy and stupid dreams in his head. She'd have to stop fighting eventually-everyone did. Even he had, with her whisper in his skull and her nails in her back, letting go, letting loose of everything that made up Seifer Almasy, every misplaced ambition and pathetic hero aspiration until there was nothing left anymore but pretty slave boy, hissing orgasm moan between his teeth in the dark.

Eventually, perhaps, she'd realize the boy who'd pulled her hair and rubbed snow in her face and made tactless sexual observations from the back of her classroom was gone now. Boy Seifer had died years ago in Timber, with his blade at President Deling's throat and that bitch's poison already in his heart.

The Seifer left behind was a vacant skeleton, full of just the ephemeral ghosts of maybes and what ifs, and the steady flame burn of his love for her.

It wasn't enough to make a man whole again, but it was something. The blaze held back the shadows that came for him in drips and oozes of dusk that spoke to him with his mother's voice, and even if she could never love him back-_would never because you're worthless boy you are such a disappointment my sad little knight-_it was still enough to keep him pieced together, if just barely.

It was enough to keep him from listening to the shadows, the ones that sometimes told him to blow brains all across the back wall of his dorm room.

Quistis turned in her seat suddenly, catching him, and Seifer's heart balled itself up like a fist.

She looked the same way she had that night, tired and defeated and out of hope, running on just the fumes of her pride and the stubborness that kept her whole.

* * *

><p>Secret Area<p>

Balamb Garden

2 Years Ago

"Well, well, well, Instructor; don't you know it's after curfew?" He could feel the smirk on his face, smug as the flame gutter of satisfaction in his stomach. Instructor Trepe, pillar of virtue, unfailing moral compass to all the little peons who were not fit to lick shit off her boots-

Breaking the rules. Flouting authority the way she had berated him so many times previously for doing just the same.

"Waiting for someone?"

She did not answer.

The lines of her body slumped in the disjointed hunch of a broken doll, and now he felt that smirk dissolve into a frown, the forehead wrinkle of it pulling on the healing line of his new scar. Was that…fuck, _alcohol_ sitting next to one perfectly-polished boot, crossed daintily in front of the other out before her?

Quistis Trepe, breaking curfew to sit alone in the secret area and drink herself into oblivion?

He was seeing things-going fucking nuts.

Had to be. The other explanation simply did not make any sense. Besides, the fuck did she have to drown in the bottom of a bottle, anyway? Her precious little Squall, her shining star of a pupil had passed his fucking SeeD exam, hadn't he? What the hell was her problem, then?

He flipped his trench coat out from beneath him and sat down, mirroring her dejected pose, one ankle crossed over the other, his chin in his hand, face contorted into an exaggerated pout.

Quistis sighed. "Seifer, please just leave."

"What crawled up your ass, Instructor?"

She ignored his question.

He straightened up and grabbed her drink, taking a long swig from the bottle with a shrug.

He almost spit it back out.

"Hyne, the fuck _is _this shit?"

She smiled, just a little, and took it away from him. "It's green tea."

"Goddamn. I thought it was alcohol." He scraped his fingers over his tongue; whatever was still crusted onto his gloves could not possibly taste worst than that shit.

"Of course not. Alcohol is not allowed on Garden premises." Quistis replied like she was quoting straight from the SeeD handbook, and Seifer rolled his eyes. He slid his hand inside one lapel and came back out holding a silver flask, the dim lights encapsulating her slender form in a shell like soft-woven Protect making it gleam like Hyperion. He uncapped it and tipped half into her bottle, then took a drink for himself.

"Seifer, what are you doing?" she protested, snatching it back too late.

"Relax. It's not poison; I just drank some myself, didn't I? You look like you could use it."

She peered uncertainly down over the lip of smooth-sanded glass and into her beverage, studying it the same way she might approach a particularly complex question posed by one of her students.

"It's good for you." he assured her.

"Actually, even a single alcoholic drink decreases reaction time by approximately-"

"Hyne, just fuckin' drink it."

Reluctantly, and with a few more suspicious looks aimed at him, she finally did, and now it was her turn to nearly spray atomized beverage mist all over the intimate little corner-tucked nook.

Seifer laughed at her. "Can't hold your booze, huh, Instructor? I'm not surprised. Don't get too hammered; I might be tempted to take advantage of you."

"It wouldn't be the worst part of my day." Quistis mumbled into her bottle.

He cocked an eyebrow in surprise at her, taking another drink from his flask. For several long minutes they sat like that in silence, quiet sips punctuated by the occasional cough from Quistis the only interruption in the stillness between them that had begun to feel almost…companionable.

He decided to break it.

"So what's your problem?"

She stared down into her drink without answering, which did not surprise him; mostly he had just asked it because he knew she did not want to answer, though there was a part of him that really did want to know just what had put that haggard, beaten look on her face and in her eyes, the one that reminded him of child Quistis sobbing over the clean-washed corpses of her sand castles. It wasn't that he _cared _of course-it was just pure nosiness, throbbing in his chest like a second heartbeat, a siren's lure of booze warmth trying to get him to touch her.

"I had my Instructor's License yanked today." Quistis told him quietly.

"_What_?" Seifer choked on his next drink, and it stalled like bile in his throat. "What idiot decided to do that?"

"I assume the 'idiot' who runs this whole place." she replied wryly. "I'm sure…I'm sure Cid had a good reason for it."

"Like what?" Seifer demanded.

"Like-" She sighed. "I'm incompetent. I have no control over my students."

"You mean me? You tryin' to blame this on _me_?"

"I'm not trying to blame anyone, Seifer. Except myself. I was found unfit, and so Garden yanked my license. It has nothing to do with anyone but me."

"Sounds like a bunch of political bullshit to me."

She glanced at him, setting down her bottle to curl both arms around the knees she tucked up under her chin. He hated it when she sat like that; he had not seen her do it for a long, long time, and always only when she was devastated about something. Like the time he had decapitated her favorite doll. Or the time she had accidentally let go of Sam's leash, a split second lapse in attention that enabled him to dash out in front of an oncoming car-

Seifer blinked away blood-smeared fur lump and her noisy tears, hot and wrenching and soaking through the front of his shirt where he cradled her face.

He wondered what he would do if she cried now. He wondered if she would let him hold her the way he had done years ago when something that was not him disappointed her, when something else caused the grief that hunched her over in that sag of defeat he was really fucking tired of looking at.

He wondered if he would want to.

Maybe. Probably.

Seifer took another sip, moodily this time. He snuck a look at her out of the corner of his eye. The goddamned vodka was starting to go to his head and his dick, because her uniform skirt had ridden up enough now to almost show him the curve of ass cheek he always hoped to glimpse during class, perfect as the rest of her, dimpling under his fingers as he bent her over that fucking desk and took her from behind-

Fuck him. Seifer slipped his flask back inside his coat.

"Well, Trepe, it's been nice, but-"

"Could you stay?"

He was halfway to his feet already, the room swimming around him a little.

"What?"

She huffed another little sigh. "I'm sure this is the alcohol talking, since your company is usually the last thing I want-"

"Gee, thanks." He sneered at her.

"-but would you…would you please stay just a little longer?"

She tried to stand up and nearly fell over, stumbling up against him. Seifer caught her reflexively, his breath going rigid in his throat as he suddenly realized she had all of her pressed up against him, every curve of breast and hip and v fork of thigh line that he fantasized about when he had nothing better to do, which was usually when he was in her class.

He was not picturing Quistis Trepe naked. He did _not _want to push her up against the wall he could feel cutting into his back, his name on her lips and his hands on that perky little ass-

Of course not. Because he couldn't break boards with his dick right now, or anything.

He tried to ease away from her, tried to put some space between them without letting go of her arms before she noticed and decided to pull it off with Save the Queen.

Quistis staggered and grabbed onto the lapels of his trench coat for balance, putting him right back where he'd started, his crotch right up against hers now with just that tissue paper layer of too-short skirt between them.

Goddammit.

She glared at him. "I think I'm drunk."

He would have laughed, if he hadn't been too busy trying to picture the unsexiest thing he could think of. Squall in a thong-Raijin butt fucking naked being serviced by Chicken Wuss in a pink summer dress-

_Anything_, goddammit.

Didn't the stupid fucking bitch realize she was rubbing herself right up against him in her efforts to stand upright without his help? Didn't she realize that skirt was nothing, he could have it off in a moment, a _second_-

Her legs around his waist, her tongue in his mouth, hips pistoning up to meet each thrust of his own, that goddamned composure shattered like the shreds of her clothing strewn all around them-

Seifer seized her by the wrists. "Would you stop rubbing up against me like you're trying to start a fire?" he snapped.

"What?" Her cheeks flushed red like the final solar flare of sunset over distant hilltop, flashfire sudden. "I didn't-"

"What, you didn't _notice_?"

"Well, I wasn't trying to-"

"I know." he snarled. Why the fuck was he so pissed? Because he had a raging hard-on now and nothing to take care of it that wasn't his own hand? Because a part of him wished she _had _done it on purpose, that there was a secret little piece of her that wanted him the way he suddenly ached for her?

Seifer turned away, running a hair agitatedly through his hair. He was with Rinoa. Sort of. Maybe. Fuck, he wasn't sure anymore; the last fight they'd had was a real blow-out, the kind with shattering cutlery and shrieked death threats. She'd told him in no uncertain terms that she never wanted to see him again-it was the whole reason he'd gone to that stupid SeeD ball, in the hopes that she'd show up and he could find out once and for all if she'd been serious, or if this latest break-up was just another heat-of-the-moment split that could be patched up with a shiny gift and a few sessions of make-up sex.

"You're…attracted to me?" Quistis asked tentatively, her cheeks still pink.

He crossed his arms. "I thought that was pretty fucking obvious."

"Squall isn't." she mumbled.

"Pubes is a fuckin' moron." Seifer told her bluntly. "You're beautiful." Why the hell had he just said that? Fucking alcohol.

Quistis tottered on her heels again, and he gripped her elbows, holding her up, that distracting arch of breast pushed into his chest again. "Hyne, Instructor; you really can't hold your liquor."

"I don't drink." She hiccupped. "How much did you put _in _there?"

"Too much, obviously."

Her bottom lip brushed his, and he wasn't sure whether it was on purpose or just some accidental graze brought about by the proximity of their mouths, but abruptly his heart turned over in his chest and died, and now he had her up against that wall, his hands fisted in her SeeD uniform and his mouth on hers, Quistis' skirt bunched halfway up her thighs.

She made a little noise in the back of her throat but didn't try to push him away, so he dropped his hands to her hips and pulled them into his, letting her feel all of him up against her. She let him part her lips with his tongue, and he felt hers hesitantly flick out to meet it, short-circuiting his brain and the tenuous control he'd clamped down over his hormones, and with a shaky hiss Seifer ground her hips harder into his, getting a handful of ass that was just as flawlessly shaped as he'd always suspected.

He wanted to fuck her up against the wall with her panties still on, her back arching and those beautiful tits bouncing with each thrust. He wanted her to scream his name when she came, hard enough to wipe anyone that wasn't him from her brain, hard enough to cut loose that stranglehold Leonhart's stupid fruity little face inevitably had on her.

She was drunk. And inexperienced; he would probably be her first.

He couldn't do that to her.

Seifer pulled away with a choked-off gasp, holding her at arm's-length long enough to get his breathing under control, which took some time. "You're drunk."

"So are you."

"Don't _fucking _do that again."

"We're two consenting adults-"

"You wouldn't be if you weren't hammered." Seifer pointed out, wishing she'd pull her goddamned skirt back down.

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to _me_." he snapped.

"Why?" She crossed both arms over her chest, her eyes narrowing behind her glasses.

_Yeah, why, Almasy? What are you, a faggot now? Just fuck her. It's not like you're a saint. _

He ignored her eyes and the voice in the back of his head, and grabbed her roughly by one arm, jerking Quistis toward the exit. "Come on, Instructor. I'm taking you back to your room. You can sleep it off."

* * *

><p>Balamb Garden<p>

Balamb

Present Day

She probably did not even remember what had almost happened between them. Between her years of junctioning and the raging hangover she had most likely woken up to the next morning, Seifer was sure the event had completely fled her mind.

He had thought he'd burned it from his own, especially considering the events that had transpired shortly after, but sure as shit, there it still was, banging at his temples like beginning migraine.

He supposed almost sleeping with Quistis Trepe was not something you just forgot.

"Waiting for Prince Charming?" he sneered, taking a step toward her. She would not be sitting there staring at that blank square of instant messenger window box like that if she knew it was him.

She gave him that you-again look that cut straight to the bone, right to his fucking gut, and then she turned back around.

"I'm not waiting for anyone." She said it bleakly, like she knew there was no purpose in doing so, one hand coming up to rub both eyes behind her glasses, stained with sleepless bruise and only half-cracked. "I just…needed to talk to someone, I guess."

Seifer slid into the chair next to her, lacing his hands behind his head. Well, he was here now, wasn't he? She talked to him easily enough when she did not know it was him, when she did not have even the tiniest sliver of inkling that the man on the other end, the patient listener with the shitty knock knock jokes and the longing to make her happy, was Seifer Almasy.

He wished he could tell her.

He knew he could not.

Quistis glanced over at him, rubbing her eyes again, harder this time. "Seifer, I'm tired."

"What? I didn't say anything." he protested.

"You were going to."

"Tch. You don't know that. Maybe I was just going to sit here and stare meaningfully into your cleavage." He smiled at her.

She shook her head. "Are you always so flippant with murderers running around Garden?"

"Is that what you've got your panties in a twist about?"

"The state of my panties is none of your business." she replied wryly. "And if I were you, I wouldn't be so unconcerned; we have no clue who is behind this. It could be anyone, and since their motive is completely unknown-"

"What, are you trying to tell me I might be next?"

She laced her hands on the desk in front of her. "If I were on a killing rampage, you would probably not be far down my list."

He put his feet up beside the knots of fist she curled her hands into, knowing it would piss her off. "Are you trying to say that when you think of murdering people, I come to mind first?"

He saw her lips tug in just the tiniest flicker of a smile, chasing some of the shadows from her eyes, and he felt his pulse bang into the side of his neck like window-trapped bird, beating itself to panicked death against unyielding glass pane. She needed to smile more often.

Especially at him.

Seifer let his boots thump back down onto the floor, leaning forward to rest both elbows on his thighs. "Instructor, I'm hurt. As one of your former star pupils, I'd expect better treatment from you." He watched the eye roll that prompted, and then bent forward so she could feel his breath on her face, his mouth a half inch shy of her right ear. "You got anything planned for tonight?"

She blinked at him, pulling back slightly. "No. Why?"

"Good." he said in a normal voice, reaching out to fold his hand around her forearm, yanking her up with him as he stood. "Let's go."

"Excuse me?" She tried to dig her heels in as he dragged her toward the door, but he could bench press weights twice Trepe's size, and he broke her resistance easily, towing her along behind him like the leash-strung doll she had pulled after her as a child, the one Irvine had laughed himself sick over because he thought it resembled Seifer. "Seifer, what are you doing?"

Not going back to that fucking room with its phantom curls of shadow like manicured nail point, that was for sure.

He kept his hand tight on her arm as he thrust the door aside with a sweep of one arm, his coat flapping in the swish of breeze that motion generated, fluttering it up against her scarred cheek. "You ever been down to the docks around this time before?"

"No, I-Seifer, let go. What are you _doing_?"

"Good." he replied, ignoring her command. He had always been shit at following orders anyway; why she even tried to issue one now he didn't have a fucking clue. It was about as useful as trying to persuade that dumbass Wuss that there was no deep-laid hot dog conspiracy tragically separating him from his favorite snack. Honestly, he was really starting to believe anyone that fixated on something that phallic-shaped had a lot of deep-seated homosexual tendencies they weren't yet ready to confront.

He'd better start reminding himself to refrain from dropping the soap in front of Wuss.

The few surprised glances they got quickly found other things to become absorbed in at a look from Seifer, and he made it to Garden's front entrance without anyone accusing him of trying to kidnap Quistis, who was carrying on in such a way as to imply that he was doing exactly that. It wasn't like any of these idiots had the balls to step up and stop him even if he was-although judging by her increasingly frustrated tone, Quistis herself might soon resort to lighting his head on fire, casting restriction or no casting restriction.

He began to run as soon as he hit the fringe of grass that was the outermost boundary line of Garden's quad, pulling her stumbling along behind him, and now there was something bubbling up in his chest, something warm and free and light-

A fucking laugh, Seifer realized, a goddamned _laugh _like he hadn't enjoyed in a long time, because running through knee-high fronds of grassland with his former instructor behind him-

He was the happiest he could fucking remember. He was boy Seifer again, sprinting toward glinting ocean curl and dazzling beach strip, the sun beginning to fray apart above him in shreds of approaching sundown, little Quisty gaining on his heels with a whoop like soldier battle cry.

"Hurry up, Instructor!"

"Seifer, what are you-"

He veered hard left, pulling her toward the typical end-of-day bustle he could see scurrying about the harbor ahead of them, and somehow, his hand found hers or her fingers wrapped his, and now they were running hand in hand, her boots clopping loudly along the planks of weather-beaten board he led her down. He swerved to the right, pushed off the dock with one foot, and then he flew, his trench coat reaching for the sky like tatters of wing, Quistis letting out a startled cry behind him.

"Seifer, no!"

He hit flat sand laughing, and pulled her up with him.

"Watch." He pointed to the sky, yanking her down next to him onto the gentle slope of dune trampled flat by their landing.

He was still holding her hand.

The sun touched the ocean, and color sputtered, it _flared_, and the multihued ripple of it flash burned all the monotony from the sky, oranges and reds and streaks of pink like new spring rosebud bursting like splattering paint.

Beside him, Quistis forgot she was mad at him, her face lit up with wonder. The sky spilled crimson like first-love flush into her cheeks, and Seifer turned away, smiling.

There was no sorceress in his skull now, no squirming maggot wriggle of rot-eaten necrosis, just the stunned twitch of her fingers in his, and the tentative arch of half-smile she threw him.

She was the light and his brain the dark, and somehow, someway she cancelled it all out.

Sitting there next to her, he was just Seifer Almasy now, not puppet Seifer, little bitch lapdog Seifer, pretty boy slave lapping the scraps of praise she threw him like a derogatory head pat, condescending appeasement.

He was just a man, watching the sunset with a pretty girl. Just a man, wondering if she'd let him keep holding her hand.

Just a man, smiling when she did, letting her contentment soak into him like sun ray.

"It's almost like-"

"Fireworks? Yeah."

"How did you know to come here?" She still had not noticed their hands were linked; Seifer wondered how long it would take her to pull away.

He shrugged, leaning back on one elbow, letting it dimple the sand beneath him. "Found the spot when I was a cadet. I used to come here after curfew to sit."

She threw him a look at that, and he smirked. It wasn't like she didn't already know he'd broken all the rules over and over again, as many as he could possibly violate in one day. She had been the one to catch him most of the time. "What?"

Quistis just shook her head. "Was there ever a rule you wanted to follow?"

"Nope. Come on, Instructor-even you have to admit a lot of them were stupid as hell."

"Like?" she prompted, sounding almost amused.

"Tch. No fighting in the halls? No talking in the library? No giving other students swirlies in the men's bathroom?"

"I don't believe I ever saw you in the library as a cadet, so you didn't really have to worry about that one. And do you really think it's out of line for Garden to expect you to not dunk poor Zell's head in the toilet?" She had not lost that slight edge of laughter to her voice, and he was glad to hear it. She worried too goddamned much about everything. Not that some murdering little bastard running loose in Garden's halls wasn't a legitimate concern, but holy fucking Hyne, did she have to take care of everything herself? Pubes was the one in charge, after all. Let some of that mantle drape over onto his shoulders.

He was tired of watching hers strain under a burden she would not be able to carry much longer.

He flipped his free hand dismissively. "It is when it's Wuss."

"You were terrible to him, even when we were kids."

"Hey, I didn't start _all _those fights."

"You started most of them. And if you didn't throw the first punch, it was because you provoked Zell into doing so." She tilted her head to look at him through the tendril of hair that fell down across the corner of one eye. "Why did you come here?"

"Huh?"

"You said you came here to sit after curfew. What were you doing here?"

Seifer shrugged again. "Just thinking."

"About?"

He squinted up into the sky, turning everything into a fuzzy orange halo above him, an arch of ginger that was slowly beginning to drown in the sea. "Quistis Trepe wants to know what was going on in _my _head?" He feigned a shocked expression. "What if I was thinking about tits the whole time?"

"I'm sure you could have managed that just as well back at Garden." She hunched her shoulders against the thin curl of breeze that reached out from the ocean to spear them like an accusing finger, the shudder bumping her arm up against his. It was bare, because he was an ass who hadn't even realized he'd dragged her outside without a jacket on, and he let go of her hand at last to shrug out of his coat.

She looked at him like he'd just punched her in the face for no reason when he draped it across her shoulders. "What?" he snapped, glowering.

"It's nothing. I'd just appreciate it if you could get me back to Dr. Kadowaki as soon as possible. I think I'm having a heart attack."

"Ha ha. You're real funny, Instructor." Seifer sat back down beside her in the sand, kicking his legs out in front of him to sprawl all the way back, hooking both hands behind his head.

She pulled the flaps of his jacket neatly together in front of her, lining the lapels up in a precise row like expert suture link, her small frame entirely engulfed by the puddle of fabric. She looked like a little girl playing dress-up, child Quisty clomping around the house in Matron's shoes.

"Thank you." she said quietly.

"Yeah, well, it's cold." he said brusquely.

"I didn't just mean for the jacket." She wasn't looking at him anymore. "I was-well, I didn't-" Quistis paused like she wasn't sure what to say. "I didn't want to be alone."

He knew the feeling.

"That internet freak probably would have shown up sooner or later, right?"

She compressed her lips into a line like old woman pucker.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to shit all over your little romance."

"It isn't like that." Quistis shifted inside his coat, pulling her knees up toward her chin, and he wanted to tell her to stop it, to knock it right the fuck off, because that was her vulnerable pose, her little lost girl spine slump, and he hated it.

"What, you don't like him?" She did, she fucking _had _to-it was the only way he could be on the receiving end of any of her affection, even if it was gathered under false pretenses. He didn't give a shit; he was going to hoard it anyway, use it to ward off his mother's hands when they came for him in the dark, her insistent fingers and lover's demanding mouth, the one that used to kiss his scratches before she bandaged them.

She had done things with it that he didn't want to remember, things that burrowed and flickered under his skin like darting minnow school anyway, skimming the surface breaker of the more benign thoughts he laid down like a coating of oil slick over the top of everything else. Before, he hadn't needed anyone else to save him-he was Seifer fucking Almasy, and the world was going to kneel and lick his goddamned boots by the time he was done with them all.

But now-now he was just so goddamned tired, you know? He was sick of fighting everything off alone, exhaustion like death whispering for him to give up as those shadows chewed their way back inside his brain and into his throat.

They tasted like his mother. They tasted like his mother, and sometimes, during the really bad nights, they whispered old promises of glory and recognition and supremacy as they mounted him like a whore.

Quistis sighed, hugging her knees. "He's just a pleasant distraction, Seifer. In real life, he's probably eighty-five, blind, and bitter with the whole world because he's now impotent. Or Selphie." she amended, her brows coming together.

"I'm sure his dick works just fine." Seifer replied hastily.

That faint amusement was back in her eyes and her voice, and she glanced over at him again. "How would you know? And, frankly, why would you care?"

"I just wouldn't want you to get cheated, Instructor."

"How kind of you. It doesn't matter anyway; I'll probably never meet him. It's better that way, I think. That way he can stay exactly as I've pictured him in my mind."

"You think you'll ever want to meet him?"

She looked out toward the ball of sunlight dropping toward calm ocean sheet like falling meteor, nighttime beginning to crop up around them almost without his having realized it: soft cricket chirps of emerging insects and spreading stain of black like contusion, and the dropping temperature that walked a ripple of shiver up his arms like his mother's fingertips.

"Part of me wants to; I think it's natural to be curious about who it is. But there's a very good chance he wouldn't live up to my expectations, so maybe it's safer for me to keep it purely a relationship of correspondence."

_Yeah-I'm thinking he'd fall way fucking short of your expectations. _

To his surprise, she laid back beside him, not quite touching but almost, her hands snugging his coat tightly around her. "Do you remember when we were kids, and we used to watch the stars come out like this?"

"And you pointed out all the constellations, and got mad when I purposefully said them wrong."

He could hear the smile in her voice. "You were almost as much of a pain as a child as you were as my student."

"I'm glad I was able to one up myself." He shifted his elbow where a piece of driftwood was beginning to dig into it. "How much do you even remember?"

"About our childhood?"

"Yeah."

"Bits and pieces. It's beginning to come back to me." She paused for a moment. "I don't have a GF junctioned anymore." she admitted quietly. "Irvine spoke so fondly of our childhood…I wanted to remember it. I'm strong enough in other casting aspects that I figured the trade-off was worth it."

Sentimentality over practicality from Quistis Trepe? He was going to have a fucking heart attack.

"What do you remember about me?"

The corners of her lips twitched wryly. "That you were an arrogant little brat who broke my toys if I wouldn't play with you."

"I just remember being extremely handsome and charming at that age-you might be thinking of someone else. Pubes, maybe?"

"Squall didn't pay attention to me long enough to behead my dolls."

"He's an idiot."

"He never needed me. He didn't need any of us, really. Except Rinoa, as it turns out."

"Hyne, you're not still pining after that moron, are you?" The thought twisted like a knife in his gut.

Her voice was just a subtle wisp of its former self. "No, Seifer."

He let silence stretch like a wire between them, coiled but not taut, the sky overhead flickering with the electric sputter of stars snapping on like lights. He pointed to one. "Aquarius or something, right, Trepe-" Seifer let his voice trail off as he craned his neck to look at her.

She was fast asleep.

He lay there for a moment, watching his coat slip gently down off the arc of her chest, her fingers gone loose on the lapels, lips just slightly parted. The hair that spilled out around her glared yellow like the sun the sky had just lost, and he caught a piece of it between his fingers.

Moving quietly, Seifer rolled over onto his knees, picking her hands up in his to lay them gently along her sides, his fingers deftly pulling his coat shut once more around her.

His thumb brushed the saw-toothed bite mark of her scar.

He kissed her forehead, letting his lips stay there for a moment, and then he curled back up next to her, watching the moon rise like a pearl over the ocean, spilling white into the motionless water.

* * *

><p>She was sitting at her desk when something blotted out the sun, and Quistis glanced up from her paperwork.<p>

Through the eastern window, the sun that had finally decided to grace Balamb with its presence impaled her through the chest in rays like cannon-sprayed shrapnel, and she watched it sketch abstract designs in zigzagging stripes of finger-painted gold.

The shape that blocked it turned everything black.

The massive silhouette that crested the distant clump of humble buildings that made up the modest harbor town of Balamb fuzzed into the distant black curlicue of a far-off seagull, and swallowed the sun.

"What the-" She pushed her glasses up her nose.

The sudden paralysis that started in her stomach locked around her spine, fusing the vertebrae together.

She stood up anyway; Quistis took just one step as that black painter's v of hovering bird turned into the swooping assault of a lunging predator and everything stopped dead inside of her-first her heart and then her throat and the breath that cut itself off in one violent gasp of choked-off air supply.

"_No_."

The students in the quad below the window of her classroom died first.

The fusillade that sprayed out in a rain like harmless aerosol cut through their upturned faces and their pointing fingers and their drop-jawed astonishment as they finally, finally understood.

From here, the bullets looked like just pelting hail, just the harmless, unwelcome rain shower of ice like the one that had battered Garden late last night, except these little ball bearings of glossy sleet blew out the side of Doug Atkin's right cheek and then his eye, jettisoning red across green quad square like the new stump of an amputated limb.

When she realized that the next volley had climbed higher, up the neat-lined row of window glass that fronted the third floor and into her own classroom, it was too late.

The first bullet gut punched her like a fist.

Behind her, the vase holding the rotted out stalks of Zell's dead roses exploded with a gunshot crack like shattering ice, and she could see the glittering shards that were all that was left of it fly off in dismembered pieces.

She went to her knees trying to stuff her guts back inside of her.

_Oh Hyne Hyne, no-_

She did not know if the rest of them were safe. She could not die like this, stooped over vomiting blood, useless as the whip that coiled unused at her side-

What if they were hurt, what if they were _dying_, and she was not there to help them, not there to save them, because all she could do was slump here in a pile of ineffective rag doll, touching slippery intestine loop with a sob. They were her _responsibility_, dammit, Rinoa, Selphie, Squall, Irvine, Zell, Seifer-all of them, her brothers her sisters-

She needed to get up. She had to-get-her-feet-underneath-

Quistis slipped in her own blood, and fell hard on both knees.

No no no no no no-

This was not how she would go down, not how she would go _out_-alone in this prison cell of a classroom, this echoing penitentiary square of isolation. She had always told herself, had always promised herself that when the end came, when she saw it chew away the light until there was just eternal dark left-

There would be someone there, holding her hand.

There was no one now, and midway through her panicked contemplation of their fates, Quistis died.

* * *

><p>The courtyard outside was full of his dying peers, staining fluffy winter coats and low-riding stocking caps and the grass beneath them.<p>

Seifer threw the dumbbell he was holding across the room with a snarl like wounded animal.

He hit the door at a dead sprint.

Quistis-goddammit-_fuck_-he had to get to Quistis, and these assholes were impeding him, milling around like bleating sheep, frightened and confused and _blocking his goddamned way_.

He threw elbows and fists and an occasional thrust of front kick that snapped chin point up and back, clearing his pathway.

Garden picked itself up under his feet in a ripple of earthquake, throwing him into a wall. He hit it hard, banging his head as he went down, and now there was screaming all around him, inside his ears and his head-

_-his head why wouldn't she get out of his _head _he didn't want her there-_

And he staggered back to his feet, bleeding from a cut that poured red down his scar, the corridor swaying around him.

He could feel his heartbeat everywhere-in his fingertips, in the erratic symphony playing inharmonious quartets in the side of his neck-

It wouldn't stop beating, wouldn't stop _pounding_ like the pressure of headache he could feel behind his eyes, and he stumbled crookedly for the stairs. There were too many of those fucking sheep crowding the elevator, but he had to get to her somehow, had to reach that third level holding her classroom before it was too fucking late.

It might already be too fucking late.

_No. _

The arc of viewport in front of him shattered, and glass sprayed Seifer's cheeks in shrapnel pieces of glowing white that glanced off his cheek and through the neck of the girl standing petrified behind him; they cut off her scream before it ever really had a chance to echo off the corridor walls, and killed the boy beside her as well.

Seifer watched the kid's eyeball shred like fragile tissue paper, and then he had his foot on the first tread of staircase that wound on forever above him.

He was three steps up when a section of roof above the elevators collapsed inward, smashing into mirror polished doors and oiled-up cables and the screaming cluster of females huddling in front of it.

His ears rang with the gigantic crack of splitting wood and fiberglass and sanded-down steel, buckling with a groan that almost drowned out the pounding trip hammer of his heartbeat.

It didn't matter. He had to keep moving, had to keep going, through the swirling dust that choked off his air, through floating blood specks and winging body parts. She was on the other side, and that, that was all he cared about, all he needed to keep him going as his lungs and his legs burned, as the floor gave another heave underneath him, tossing him down onto his ass.

Fuck it. He'd crawl.

Seifer pulled himself along military style, using his elbows to propel himself, ignoring the slivers of glass that sliced through his coat and into the skin beneath.

Her entire fucking classroom was on fire.

He staggered through the doorway coughing, using the cuff of his sleeve to blot out the smoke, his eyes cutting through layers of gray, looking, looking-

Seifer found her facedown in a puddle of her own blood, not moving.

"No. _No_!" he screamed, falling to his knees beside her. He lifted her in his arms, turned her faceup, and oh fuck-oh fuck her _guts _were hanging out, strung out like the lines of puppet thread his mother had used to make him dance, and she wasn't breathing, she wasn't goddamned _breathing_.

He laid her out flat on the floor, his shaky hands cupping her chin, tilting it back, and then he had his hands on her chest, her blood-smeared, ruptured chest, and there were fucking tears in his eyes, because she was staring up at him with a blankness he already understood but could not accept.

One…two…fucking three…He breathed into her. Her chest rose and fell with the artificial simulcrum of life his exhale gave her.

Please please please please please…

"_Quistis_." he snapped. "Quistis, _please_, goddammit-"

His eyes were blurring too much-he couldn't see her face anymore, couldn't tell if he'd done any good, and he wiped his sleeve angrily across them. "_Fuck_!"

She did not say anything, and she did not breathe.

She did not move at all.

He sank slowly back on his heels. "No. _No_, fuck you!" Seifer screamed again.

The cry tore him open with a moist squelch like blade-skewered eye socket, and he realized suddenly that it was not wrenching grief wail laying him bare-

It was spine-shattering bullet tip, corner-knicking lung sac and exiting like a fist.

He could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, and taste it in his throat.

His chest spit blood onto her cold wax figurine's face, an arc of fountain splash that caught the light like splatters of gem.

Seifer's fingers closed around the nub of gun blade handle he could just barely feel, its point squealing like knife-stuck pig against the floor.

_The fuck are you going to do, cripple? They just blew out your spine._

He didn't care. He did not give _two fucking shits_, because they had killed Quistis, and they were going to pay.

He turned around to face them. Two soldiers in the doorway, wearing uniforms he could not recognize through the blood running down his face. Two poor little fuckers he would use to vent all his rage, all his cataclysmic, world-ending grief that he didn't know where to put-

Seifer cocked the hammer on Hyperion, slippery under his thumb with blood or tears or both-he didn't know.

He didn't care.

He shot the first one as he ducked down through a swirl of smoke cloud, and the second-

The second he cut down at the legs, two flashing slashes of silver blur that hacked knee cap and severed leg tendon and brought the man down to Seifer's level. He rammed Hyperion through the fucker's throat, giving a wrist flick that twisted the handle and sprayed blood across his face, opening a bloody smile line like fish gill across the soldier's pale neck.

* * *

><p>Irvine had Selphie in his arms, and then suddenly he didn't, a distant roar like maurading dragon yanking the world out from beneath their feet.<p>

They'd been dancing in the ballroom that had become her masterpiece, waltzing playfully across freshly-polished floor-and then there was no floor, there were no _walls_, just jagged edges of crumpled metal teeth, and the empty hands he reached out toward her.

"_Selphie_!" he screamed.

He heard her answering cry, panicked shriek that spiraled up to kiss his ears-

And then there was nothing, just settling dust and groaning metal, and he was running, he was _sprinting_ through the debris, kicking it aside, lifting what he could, digging toward that dust-grayed flick of brown he could see-

Another explosion rattled his teeth in his head, and pushed him down onto his knees.

He looked up through the gaping hole of ceiling that did not exist anymore, and through that smoking crater of sheared-off steel and wood, Irvine Kinneas watched his death come for him.

Gunfire like pissed-off bees screamed down, down like rain, down like sparks of firework lighting up night-dark beach, and he felt them all nibble a million different holes into him, through his arms and his legs and his heart, through his eyes and his lips and his brain.

One of them shut off the throbbing light in his skull, and he free fell into darkness that lasted forever.

* * *

><p>Ellone was watching him with a smile, chin tucked into her hands.<p>

He smiled back at her, thinking how pretty their beloved 'Sis' had grown up to be, how nice and gentle and unjudgemental she had turned out to be, just like Zell had always known she would.

You could get lost in eyes like that, he thought, and then a scream like train whistle ripped into his skull, and suddenly he was holding her severed head in his lap.

The rest of her dangled in pieces of grisly wall hanging all over his dorm room, and the entire west side of it where she'd been sitting suddenly was not there anymore. It was not there like the light in her pretty eyes, and he swung her staring face out away from his body in an arc of underhand toss that hurled it off somewhere in the corner, and fell to his knees vomiting.

He sobbed as he threw up, wiping his eyes and then his mouth, Garden giving a vicious shudder around him. He slid down carpet that now had a slight slope to it, slanting list that pulled him down into the jaws of serrated cave-in where she had died.

He screamed and flailed his feet. He _shrieked _and dug his nails in, letting them tear off in the carpet, letting them peel back until all ten fingers were tipped in open flesh that oozed blood like puss.

It did not matter. Nothing did, and he was still sliding, still tumbling, and that maw lunged forward to eat him now-

* * *

><p>They were coming for her. They kicked in her door and shot Squall in the face, threw her down across the bed and kneeled on her back as they cuffed her hands.<p>

She felt tears like acid sear holes into her cheeks. The magic she reached for, the tangle of constant awareness that was almost another limb-she couldn't feel it anymore. It was gone, somehow cut away like it had never even been there in the first place.

She could not save them. Her friends and the man she loved, leaking gelatinous brain matter all over the bed they had shared, this institution that was now her beloved home, belching flame as it died-

Gone. Gone like her magic, like the vacancy in her chest where her heart used to be.

Gone because all they had wanted was her, all she had needed to do was let go, let loose of this home she loved and that man she could not live without, the one wearing bullet hole like a third eye, and because she had not been able to do that, because she had not even _tried _to do that-

Their screams rose around her like wails of damned soul.

_I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so so sorry-_

* * *

><p>He waited to die with her head in his lap.<p>

Fluid gathered in a sticky adhesive of fatal blood clot in his lung, sewing shut his airway one creeping, too-slow centimeter at a time.

It wouldn't be long now.

He stroked her hair and cupped her face, and she was so cold, so fucking, fucking cold like his useless legs, folded in an awkward accordion pleat of worthless meat underneath him. He hated that he couldn't see her eyes, couldn't fucking _stand _that they would never look at him again-some mornings they had been his only reason to get out of bed, and now they sat underneath those eyelids tinged in death gray like blue marbles, like lifeless children's toys-

Seifer laid his cheek against hers, closing his eyes.

It would not be long now. It _could not _be long now. He did not want to sit around holding her body any longer, trying to let the numbness in his legs spread to his heart, because it was the only way he could survive his last few moments of existence, because it was the only way he could let the shrieks that pushed against his lips die quietly the way he would.

She was _cold _and that wasn't right, Quistis Trepe was warm and smiling and too-kind, too goddamned good for him and his disfigured murderer's hands touching her cheeks and lips and nose, feeling everything while he still could, because if there was any fucking justice in this world, she was already somewhere better, and he-

He would not be joining her.

Ash fell like snowflakes. They coated her face in blizzard flurries of crisped charcoal, and Seifer brushed them all away, leaving streaks of black behind, long stripes like war paint that made him angry.

She was too fucking _good _to die like this. She had always been too fucking good for this life-she could have had a house on the beach and children of her own, and a husband who came home early because he loved her, a good man who built sandcastles and did not break them-

And maybe, in another life, he could have tried to be that man, maybe in an alternate universe somewhere, an unhaunted, an unburdened Seifer Almasy was that man, and he came home with a smile on his lips and flowers in his hand, and she looked at him the way she used to look at Squall.

* * *

><p><em>Orbis terrarum mos intereo. Panton exuro , liberi.<em>

_They mos adveho. Quod vos mos intereo_-

_-they mos adveho quod yos mos intereo they mos adveho quod vos mos intereo they mos adveho quod vos mos intereo-_

_They will come. And you will die._

_They will come and you will die._

_theywillcomeandyouwilldie-_

_-orbis terrarum mos intereo panton exuro liberi-_

_The world will die. Everything burns, children._

_They will come and you will _die-

Rinoa sat up with a sharp gasp, kicking twists of sheet from her legs. Beside her, Squall stirred and rolled over, cracking a sleep-blurred eye at her. "Are you-"

"They're coming they're coming _they're coming_!" she screamed.

He sat up with a frown, the sheet he had draped over his bare chest falling into a puddle at his waist, one arm coming up to smear sleep from his eyes. "Rinoa, what are you talking-"

She was inside their heads, all of them, and they were hurting, they were _dying_, and there was nothing she could do, no way she could help-

She had killed them all, she had _killed them all Hyne help her_-

Rinoa slumped forward with her face in her hands, sobbing. "Squall everyone's going to die they're going to come for me and they'll kill all of them-_everyone_; I have to leave _I have to leave_."

His arms came around her, and when he spoke, his voice trembled and kicked over into hesitant uncertainty, and it was that more than anything that frightened her. "It was just a dream, Rinoa. Shhh." He did not sound like he was sure, but he held her anyway, stroking her hair and kissing her forehead, and cradled against his warm, familiar body, Rinoa could pretend, just for a while, that perhaps it had been nothing more than fanciful nighttime creation after all.

She let him pull her back down beside him, and did not sleep for a long time.


	14. Chapter 12

**A/N: Warning, long author's note to commence. First off, I've gotten some really awesome comments lately on both here and the Seifer/Quistis livejournal group, so a huge thank you to everyone who has taken the time to say something. I'll be honest; I am a review whore. Since I am not getting paid for this and will likely never get paid for my writing, feedback gets to be my reward instead, and I squeal like a schoolgirl everytime I see a review alert in my e-mail. Even though I am 24. And a complete tomboy with a motorcycle and a potty mouth. So if it entertains you, everytime you hit the review button, picture a full grown woman in full riding gear jumping around in front of a crotch rocket bigger than she is, flapping her hands and making noises like a junior high girl meeting Justin Bieber for the first time. **

**Angie-I laughed when I read the first part of your review because you almost had a reason to be way more ticked at me; I actually debated during my last update just skipping a week and letting two weeks go between updates so I could get farther ahead. (I am already either five or six chapters ahead of what has been posted, including this chapter-literally more than 100 pages-but apparently that's not enough or something.) And then I gave myself a last minute guilt trip because I'd been updating every week and I figured by now people following this were expecting that, so that was why it was later than usual.**

**Mischka-nice to see you. Don't feel shy about reviewing, and not just my fic-any story on here that you read and really enjoyed. I don't know any author who expects epic essays about how the reader felt about the story; we just want to get feedback, you know?**

**Also, I got a couple of comments about people reading the scene after the beach with dropped jaws, and I'm really happy that was well received. A lot of that was actually from the original fic I was working on before this distracted me. Since it will likely never see the light of day, I kind of wanted to be able to share it with people in some small way; the idea for the whole scene came from it, as well as a few paragraphs being copied straight over, with a little editing here and there of character names and a few adjustments that had to be made to fit the FF 8 universe. Parts of the story were inspired by FF 8, and Seifer inspired the main male character, so I figured it was fitting. And for my final note (I promise this is almost over,) in this chapter Ellone sends one of the characters back in time the way she inserted Squall into Laguna's past life and whatnot; I decided to write this in first person, since it's kind of an odd situation; the character is experiencing an event through someone else's eyes (or not in this case; you'll see what I mean,) but they are experiencing it as though it is happening to them, so I felt this was the best perspective to use. However, I can count on one hand the number of times I have written in first person because it is not normally a perspective I'm partial to, so hopefully it sounds all right. Oh, and congrats if you made it all the way through this. :p **

**Chapter Twelve**

Harbor

Balamb

The sun spread its warmth like a cloak, faroff bloodstain that she could just barely see through the slits of her eyes. Filtered through the clumps of her eyelashes like that, it registered as faded strawberry, a heat shimmer pulse against her eyelids.

When she opened them all the way, dawn exploded like festering gut wound, spraying gore.

She wondered when she would stop seeing violence everywhere she looked. When sunrise could just once more be refracted light waves in her pupils, filled-in artist's canvas on the far horizon.

She was a soldier. Glorious sunrise and gentle sunset were not-could never be-something transitory and beautiful, just a simple act of nature painting red across her smiling face.

They would always be dripping scalp laceration, smiling open around bloody skull cap.

And this man sleeping beside her, this man with one hand fisted underneath his cheek like a little boy from her childhood-

This man would never be anything more than ruined ambition, heel-dogged by his own failures.

Quistis watched him sleep.

At rest, the scorn and arrogance and faint shadow tinge of the demons she was beginning to suspect he harbored under the superficial first layer of his pride did not exist anymore, and for a moment, Quistis was not sure who she was looking at. The infuriating man with the child-like temper, explosively quick when he did not get his way? Boy Seifer with his streak of nasty cruelty a mile wide and that corresponding vein of goodness she somehow always forgot about?

Or was this someone else, someone new, someone who took her to see sunsets when she was lonely and did not stare at her scar the way everyone else did, like it was all they could see, all that was left of her-

Someone who diligently copied poetry they hated and made jokes that boosted her sagging, empty soul-

No. That was certainly not the Seifer Almasy she knew. His frantic concealment of the book she had not quite been able to glimpse certainly raised Quistis' suspicions, but the man she had known for most of her life, the immature boy who had prodded Squall with pencil and jibe and the 'accidental' elbow nudge she had to keep scolding him over-that man would pursue her with all the confidence of the typical, egotistical young man who'd sneered at her from the back of her classroom. That man would hunt her like wood-stalked prey, cut through all her barriers, bed her and then leave her. It was what men like Seifer Almasy did, leaving behind the broken hearts of stupid girls who had allowed themselves to believe they would be the one to change him, the one to bring the resident bad boy quietly and meekly to their loving hand.

Quistis Trepe was not stupid. And she did not harbor any illusions about what the war had done to him, how it might have changed him.

He was still Seifer Almasy, just a little darker now, a little angrier now, and she still did not trust him.

She pulled his jacket from around her and sat up, moving carefully so she did not touch him.

He had drool on his chin.

It made her stop, smiling, his trench coat hanging precariously from the shoulders she had not quite shrugged out from underneath it. It was so startingly…_human_, so like the little boy she had known a long time ago, in that storybook childhood that was the closest she would ever come to the fairytales their mother used to read them.

Without thinking, Quistis reached out to very lightly shift a piece of hair from his closed eyes, her fingers just barely grazing the raised edge of his scar, jagged as new wound lip under her cautious touch.

He cracked an eye open, and Quistis jerked her hand guiltily back, bringing it awkwardly to her hair, the knot of bun she had wound it into the day before snarled into a rat's nest of hopeless tangle. Seifer rolled onto his back, blinking up into the sun, looking disoriented, and she realized that at some point throughout the night, that patch of dried saliva had migrated all the way down the side of his right cheek.

She touched a hand to her mouth, hiding a smile.

"What?" he demanded, squinting at her.

Quistis shook her head. "Nothing."

He gave her a suspicious frown. "_What_?" He sat up too quickly apparently, and bent forward with one hand to his spine, face twisting. "Fuck."

"What's wrong?"

"My back. Slept on it wrong, I guess."

She smiled again. "Are you twenty-one or eighty-five?"

He scowled at her, dug the toe of his right boot into the sand, and with an agile flick of his ankle, sent it in a cold, wet clump up against the curve of her cheek.

The naked triumph in his smile pissed her off. Quistis scooped up a retaliatory handful, and dumped it unceremoniously down his back as he bent forward to re-tie one of his laces.

"Shit!" he hollered, leaping to both feet. He had that look in his eyes, the one he had always worn as a child right before he did something that would make Matron punish him, and she scrambled quickly upright, his coat landing soundlessly at her feet.

"Seifer, don't-"

He had his arms around her waist before she could take more than a step, and with a startled scream, Quistis felt the beach disappear under her boots, vanishing beneath them as he lifted her just as easily as though it were she who was the child, his chest warm against her back. "You still look sleepy, Instructor. This should help you wake up."

"Don't you _dare_-"

He tossed her into the ocean.

She thrust a hand out with all the flawless instinct eleven years of training had given her, until reactions were not so much feedback from her brain into her nervous system as a mindless afterthought of motion that she did not even think about. Her hand flashed, caught and then twisted, tangling in his shirt and bringing him down with her. Seifer staggered and pitched forward, landing in the shallow surf on top of her, the violent splash of their impact rocketing sand like a spray of shrapnel into his eyes, faint little grains that clung to lashes she had never before noticed were extremely long.

He leaned into her as he blinked them away with a string of expletives, using his weight advantage to pin her so that she could not maneuver. Quistis reached her hands up to frame his cheeks, yanking his face down so they were only a few inches apart, his lips bleeding saltwater down onto hers.

She smiled, and pulled his face past hers, down into the water beneath her shoulder.

He came up sputtering.

* * *

><p>The mind of Cid Kramer was rusty, bogged down in the dirty grit of memories like dying star, taking everything with them as they sank down and down and down.<p>

It was an endless well from which he could not escape, mildew-slimed wall he could not scale, but there was still cognitive reasoning there, still functioning brain cell observing and processing and filing away for later. It kept air in his lungs and mobility in his limbs-

And it had seen what his children thought of him. It had seen what Quistis Trepe, bright, kind, beautiful Quisty, had not been able to face.

He stared out the window of his home into turbulent ocean crest, hands folded in his lap.

He was waiting for his wife to come home.

Or rather, he was waiting to go home to her.

Because this world, this quiet seaside universe that still echoed with the soprano chime of his children's laughter, and the deeper timbre of his wife's-

This world was not his home anymore. This hollow void that swelled out around him in a ceaseless susurrus of quiet sea tide and plaintive gull cry-this was just the bleached rainbow spectrum of the pain he drowned in now. Once, all the myriad shades that were supposed to be there had been-his wife's hair and mouth and eyes, the inquisitive gazes of his children, filled with awed hero worship-these were the colors Cid Kramer surrounded himself with, pastel ocean blue and lilac flower bud purple.

And now-

Now he lived color blind, hanging in that unending abyss of white like broken television static, feeling it hum buzzing feedback through his veins with a live current rattle. That white was pain, and he was tired of it, tired of the way it wrapped everything-his body and the view outside his window, the beach it washed in monochrome uniformity-

He just wanted it to go away.

He shut his eyes.

If he kept them pressed closed long enough, tight enough, when he opened them, he could see sparks of afterimage like fading sunspots in front of him, laughing children and the flare of his wife's skirt as she chased them.

He did not want it to hurt anymore.

And so he sat there waiting, letting seconds and minutes, hours and days all crawl past, until at last the time would come for him to join their twirling ghosts on the beach below.

It could not be long now.

* * *

><p>Zell eyed the smear of Mylar silver he could just barely see from here, a lone smudge of gray against the cathedral arch of ballroom ceiling above him.<p>

Beside him, Irvine had his hat pulled low over his eyes like he couldn't quite bear to look at it, and Zell turned to let his friend see the scowl he let screw his lips down tight against his skull. He didn't know what the hell Kinneas was worried about; he was diddling Selphie, after all-she wasn't going to remove _his _man parts when she returned from her lunch break to discover this disaster.

He squinted up at it again, trying to think through the panic eating a hole like hotdog-induced heartburn through his gut.

"All, right, I got a plan, ok?"

Irvine did not look particularly relieved at this revelation. He was eyeing the T-board Zell had tucked under one arm like he was pretty sure it was about to be the catalyst for something monumentally stupid-which was unfair, because he'd accomplished great things in the past with this nifty little invention-and Zell let it fall with a thud, activating its thrusters with a nudge of his toe. It bounced up to hover a foot off the ground, bobbing patiently in place while he crossed his arms and tapped one shoe thoughtfully against the floor, the dull thud of each little rap echoing back to him with a magnified boom like cave acoustics.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Seifer lounging against the wall to Zell's left like he owned the whole damn thing, his trench coat slung casually over one shoulder and a smirk on his face.

Zell turned away with a frown. Almasy was the last person he wanted witnessing this-couldn't he go look for Quistis someplace else? She wasn't even here right now; the girls had all taken Ellone out to the quad for lunch and probably some tittering conversation about their next slumber party-at least that was what he assumed women usually discussed when they got together anyway, just like he had convinced himself that there were _too _pillow fights conducted in skimpy lingerie at said slumber parties, and tender, apologetic kissing afterward. He didn't care what Quistis had told him.

Zell stepped onto his board. "Ok, so Kinneas, you get behind me and grab around the bottom, and Almasy-"

"You're talkin' 'bout the T-board, I hope."

"Yeah, duh. Anyway, Almasy-"

"The fuck makes you think I'm helping with this?"

"The Spring Festival is _tonight_. Come on, man-if Selphie sees that balloon in the wrong place, she's going to have a nuclear meltdown. You're not gettin' out alive either. So, you grab the front and you guys are going to throw me up as hard as you can, right? And I'm going to cast Float on it, and if this works, I can just ride the board right up to it. Piece a' cake."

"Not that I haven't thought about it before, but I'm not throwing your fat ass all the way up to the ceiling."

"He might get hurt." Irvine pointed out, adjusting his hat.

Seifer thought about that for a moment, then shrugged and took up his position.

"Dincht, get your butt outta' my face."

"Quiet, _Irvy_. I need to concentrate." He framed the wayward balloon in an L of thumb and forefinger that bordered it in a square like camera viewfinder, then gave Irvine a thumbs up. "Ok, on my count-one, two, three…go!"

He heard two simultaneous grunts and then a stream of expletives from Seifer, and beneath him, the board wobbled, jerked, and he had to make a frantic grab for its handle before he slid off over the side.

"Goddammit, Wuss, you're a fatass for a little midget."

"Dincht, I really think ya' need to lay off all those hotdogs."

"Hey, shut the hell up!" he snapped, and then suddenly he yelped, making another swipe at the handle he clung to for dear life as the T-board gave another lurch underneath him and then suddenly shot upward; he grabbed for the tendrils of spell stock he could just barely feel tickling at the edges of his mind, and pulled.

Float flash burned away everything else within his line of sight for a moment, blue-white like flame core and trailing strobe bursts of white like blinding star flare at the corners of his eyes. He blinked it away, siphoning more magic from his stock, pouring it into the fusion of fiberglass and metal that had begun to go unstable beneath him, shuddering violently as that bead of silver spread out in a head-sized globe above him.

Holy shit. It had actually worked.

Zell made a grab for the string that hit him in the face, coming triumphantly away with it in his hand. "Guys, I got it!" He twisted around to wave exuberantly, his grin hurting his cheeks like the cheerful lip coil of a conquering hero saving the day-

And then suddenly he realized it had not occurred to him how he was going to get down.

"Oh shit."

* * *

><p>"What is going on?"<p>

Seifer spun around to find Quistis frowning at him, arms folded over her chest and that little staccato drum beat of toe tap that indicated she was rapidly running out of patience beating out its steady refrain against shining floor tiles. He had witnessed it many times in class-it had generally been inspired by him, after all-but she no longer had the authority to send him to detention, and Seifer grinned down at her as Rinoa, Selphie and Ellone began to filter in behind her, and Irvine stepped up beside him.

"Ladies." The lanky cowboy sketched out a gallant bow, sweeping his hat off his head as he dipped down, the wink he aimed at Quistis not moving her in the least. "Miss Tilmitt, ah do believe ah've never seen anything quite so beautiful before. Almasy and ah here were jest admirin' your handiwork, darlin.'" he said, exaggerating his drawl as he slipped an arm around his girlfriend's shoulders and smoothly turned her back toward the exit, Selphie's perky thank-you indicating she had not yet seen Zell.

"Get all the seaweed out of your hair, Instructor?" he asked politely.

Quistis gave him a look that suggested she was not amused.

He felt his smile go wider.

Judging by the next look she shot him, this did not amuse her either.

Irvine made it safely out into the hall with Selphie tucked under his arm, and he saw Quistis shift her eyes toward the ceiling, where a screaming Zell was now trying to use the balloon he clutched as a sort of airfoil to slow his very rapid descent. He was shouting for Seifer to catch him as he fell, which was about as likely as Quistis suddenly throwing herself into his arms and demanding he make babies with her, so he just kept on standing there smiling down at her.

With a weary sigh, she stepped around him.

Seifer turned around in time to see Zell, still screaming, stumble on his board and nearly go over the side as it suddenly came to an almost-halt mid-air, Float ensnaring it in a petrified ice storm of white like early-morning mist shroud. Quistis turned away as he sank back toward the floor at a reasonable speed, rubbing her arms, and Seifer briefly contemplated smacking the shit out of Wuss.

He'd smack the shit out of her for casting anything in the first place, except, well-she'd put a foot through his sack. And her pretty face didn't need to be anymore dinged up than his SeeD test had already rendered it.

She sighed again. "Don't say anything."

"You're not supposed to be casting."

"What did you want me to do, let Zell drop himself on his head?"

"I didn't really see a problem with that."

"I think that's already been done one too many times, anyway." She said it with a hint of a smile, and Seifer ignored the way his chest tightened up. He was getting pretty sick of this whole unrequited shit-pining away after some aloof woman was all right for idiots like Zell who were never going to get laid anyway, but for someone like Seifer Almasy, someone with the snarling bad boy appeal every moron woman thought she could fix, it was really just unacceptable.

Easier fucking said than done.

"Thanks, Quisty!" Zell yelled; the acoustics of the ballroom pitched his voice at a volume just below ear-shattering, and in three long skipping strides he had her in a one-armed embrace up against his chest. It was the kind of hold Seifer himself would have very much liked to slip his arms around her in, and he felt resentment like new-kindled flame build inside his chest.

"You comin' to the Festival tonight, Quisty?" Zell shifted his T-board to the crook of his other arm and ran the hand still clutching the balloon he had just risked his life for through the sweat-oiled points of his spikes. "Like, maybe you could let Ellone do your hair or something. I'm sure she's gettin' sick a' hanging out with me all the time."

"I could understand that." Seifer intervened.

"Screw off, Almasy! Thanks a lot for all your help back there."

"Tch-did you really expect me to catch you, Wuss? What was I supposed to do-let you land on my fucking head?"

"You could have done _something_."

"I did; I let you fall to your death. I wanted people to remember you; I figured they could put something like 'Here Lies Chicken Wuss: This Dumb Fuck Tried To Fly A T-Board Can You Believe It?' on your gravestone or something. You could have been famous."

"Hey, fuck you, man!"

Quistis rolled her eyes and walked out.

* * *

><p>Seifer was talking to a bimbo with breasts each the size of his skull when Quistis walked into the ballroom again later that evening.<p>

She swept past him without a word, making a beeline for the refreshments table with its towering coil of dragon-shaped punch fountain, that ridiculous snout emptying red like blood all down the front of a cadet's uniform as he attempted to fill the cup he was holding. He looked up plaintively, and Quistis smiled, slipping a fresh cup off the stack Selphie had piled at the end of the table. "There's a trick to it." She worked the fountain deftly and handed it to him, getting an awestruck look in return that warned her she had probably just inadvertently recruited another Trepie; Quistis watched him go with a sigh, wondering if she could talk herself into believing that the punch hadn't been spiked.

She spent a moment eyeing it dubiously, then turned away. She was not particularly interested in gambling on just how much alcohol someone had probably added to it, and just what effect that addition would have on her complete inability to stomach liquor.

Zell was dancing with Ellone nearby, and he jerked his chin at her in acknowledgement. "Yo, Quisty! Glad to see ya' made it."

"I'm just here for a minute, actually. I needed a break from this awful book Selphie loaned me." She'd lied pleasantly about what she thought of the last one, since it was not worth her friend's wrath just to trash on a novel that she did not want to spare any more brain cells thinking about-it had already wiped out an unhealthy number of them-which had, unfortunately, resulted in Selphie gleefully loaning her another one that was just possibly worse than the first. Previously, Quistis would not have thought that to be possible, but the book she had needed to replace in Deling City only made her want to cut herself; this one left her contemplating her closet and the length of uniform tie she fingered speculatively.

Truthfully, she had intended to hole up in her dorm room for the entire evening, out of the entirely rational fear that this new matchmaking committee Selphie had founded recently was really just a front to attach Quistis to someone she deemed suitable. Anything with a pulse and an extra appendage, for instance.

Anything like Seifer Almasy, who had divested himself of his bimbo and was now heading toward her.

Ellone gave her a playful wink over Zell's shoulder.

Quistis suppressed a groan.

He was dressed in Garden-issue black pants today, his shoulders for once bare of both his trench coat and the knife-point gleam of Hyperion. They filled out a plain black t-shirt to perfection, and tapered all the way down to stone-chiseled waistline, the same one she sometimes caught herself superimposing over gushing descriptions of the unnaturally well-endowed hero of Selphie's latest 'book.' It was a particular sore spot for her, a constant thumb in the eye irritation of grudging acknowledgement. Men she did not particularly care for were supposed to be just as fat and ugly as they were aggravating; Seifer Almasy, if the world had any sense of justice at all, would have grown into a young man of 5' 2" and 350 lbs. with a knobbed protusion of bulb nose like a clown's.

Clearly, the universe was just as unfair as Zell always declared it to be whenever the cafeteria ran out of hot dogs.

"Wearing your hair down today, Instructor? That's a nice look. Kinda' like the librarian in a porno-always has her hair up and her glasses on, until one day she lets it down, unbuttons her top, and suddenly everyone realizes she's got a pair of jugs like watermelons and she can suck a golf ball through a garden hose."

Quistis touched her hair self-consciously, rolling her eyes. She had worn it down to cover her scar, arranging it in a spray of gold across both shoulders-perfectly divided between them, of course. The strokes of brush teeth she had used to blend each strand together in a unified sheet of blonde like desert heat-shimmer hung like a flap of curtain across that raised edge of damaged skin. At first, she had forced herself to live with it, told herself to deal and move on, swallow vanity and keep going. Vanity was not practical anyway; the way one looked was not a reflection on anything other than the fusion of DNA that held a person together, superficial wrapping paper that did not count.

But she was still just twenty one years old, still just a woman, and when she looked in the mirror she wanted to see something pretty and pleasing and maybe even a little breathtaking staring back, and not freak show monster features.

She wanted the grown-up version of Matron's pretty little girl.

She wanted to take one final glance in her mirror before leaving for the day the way she used to, one last careful inspection that showed her a hair to smooth here, a thread of stray eyebrow strand to flatten there. It was the same military precise scrutiny she lent her dorm and clothes and classroom, neatly-aligned rows of high shine button gold and mirror-polished shoe tip showing the world everything she wanted them to see: Quistis Trepe the put-together, Quistis Trepe the prepared-

Quistis Trepe the _perfect_, trailing cheek flesh like ropes of shivering intestine coil. New day crimson and corpse pallor of jagged bone tongue, poking up through the ruined crater of her face-

That was all she was now. Kadowaki's injections had stopped working, taking away the hope she had used to keep Quistis determinedly putting her hair up, leaving her deflated around it. She knew what it looked like in reality: a subtle spray of dimples like tooth imprint, rough like the elevated lip of Squall's forehead scar, or Seifer's. Noticeable, but not distracting to anyone except for her anymore.

But to Quistis-

To Quistis, it was all she could see, all she'd been able to stare out that evening as she was getting ready, Dr. Kadowaki's words echoing in the hollow cavity of her chest. _"I'm sorry, Quistis-looks like this is the best we're going to get. You're still beautiful, though, my dear, so let's get a smile back on that face."_

"Want to dance?" Seifer was asking her, and she blinked herself out of memories that pulled at her like nightmare, bringing his face into focus. Overhead lamps throwing illumination like watered-down moonlight gleamed in his hair, and polished his eyes. He had his hand out and a smirk on his face, and it was a pathetic testament to her loneliness that a part of her wanted to take it.

She wondered if '3877SA' was here tonight, and what he thought of the smear of glass finish pink she had talked herself into wearing across her lips.

"You're asking this time?" Quistis raised an eyebrow.

"If I don't, that idiot over there's going to." He indicated something over her shoulder, and she turned to look. A cadet watching her uncomfortably intently huddled in a corner-cast shadow nearby, staring Quistis down like a starved Zell eyeing a hot dog.

The shiver that chased itself up her spine speared her shoulders like a blade. Damn Trepies.

"Actually, I think I'm going to just leave."

Seifer let his hand fall. "Didn't you just get here?"

"Yes, but with everything that's happened lately-well, I don't really have time for something like this. There are a lot more important things I could be doing."

"Leonhart's here." Seifer pointed out.

"Only because Rinoa made him come."

The feedback squeal of band stage microphone stabbed her ears like a knife, and Quistis watched Seifer's face twist in a grimace. Selphie's perky voice suddenly boomed out at them from every corner, omnipresent as the subvocal command of Hyne. "Hey everyone! This is your host, Seeeeeelphieeee Tilmitt!" She paused for the smattering of applause that probably all originated from a frightened-into-submission Festival Committee, and tipped the cowboy hat she had swiped from Irvine. Quistis could see the unshadowed eclipse of his profile from here, fondly amused as he stared up at his girlfriend like she was the only person in the entire room. "So, there's a new committee in town, right? And it's dedicated to all you single cadets and cadetees!" She was staring right at Quistis. "So in honor of it tonight, everybody single kiss the person standing next to you, ok?"

She would not look away from Quistis.

"Ok, one…two…"

The lights went out.

* * *

><p>Shadow murk like the oil sheen of nightmare that oozed off his walls each night to eat him dropped like a billow of cloak over Seifer's eyes.<p>

"What the hell-"

The hive buzz of the emergency lights kicked on, dull yellow that skipped across her hair and the burnished shine of the lip gloss she had coated her mouth in, and the pale line of arm like reptile strike that whipped itself in a coil of neck break hold around her throat.

Seifer lunged, but not fast enough.

The cadet who had watched Quistis from his corner, the one he had assumed was just some cringing little Trepie without the sack to do anything more than ogle her had her in a professional sleeper's hold that would crack her spine in a flat second with just a twist of pressure here, and a torque of forearm jerk there.

He froze.

"Don't move." the kid hissed.

Up on the stage, Selphie blurted out a startled "Hey!" It was the only thing she managed before a crack of gunshot threw her off the edge of podium lip she presided over like a god, and into Irvine's arms.

Pressed tight against her captor's chest, Quistis jerked, a strangled cry stalling in her throat.

"Don't _move_!"

A cadet holding snub-nosed machine gun stepped to the front of the stage, Selphie's microphone in his hand; Seifer could see the condensation mist of his sweat from here, and the subtle finger twitch of wire strung nerves. "Where's Rinoa?"

In the center of the ballroom, a ripple of incoming surf motion parted around a couple clinging to one another in the sea of jam-packed cadets surrounding them, and Seifer recognized the jet gloss of Rinoa's head cradled protectively against Squall's chest. Fringe sections of crowd peeled off from the throng ringing them, and now more weapons began to appear, blossoming from behind coat lapels and tail-tucked shirts.

Fuck _him_.

He had to get that asshole away from Quistis.

"Bring her up here." the cadet onstage demanded.

Squall pulled her more tightly against him, and one of those lurkers got in between them now, giving Garden's commander a push with the nub of gun barrel he jabbed into his chest, sending him sprawling, taking stunned-silent cadets down with him.

Gunfire like a string of match-lit fire crackers broke that bubble of horrified stillness in a series of reports like a twist of knuckle pop, and someone screamed.

The man holding Quistis echoed it.

He lit up like the chain of muzzle flare that stitched itself through the crowd, and Seifer leapt. His dive became a lunge of spear jab that struck the guy in the throat hard enough to free her, Firaga describing artery lines of black flaking ash where his arm skin used to be. He let both arms fold around the kid's neck and cracked him like a whip over one shoulder, breaking his spine.

Quistis fell to her knees.

Seifer kneeled in front of her as more suppressive fire rang out, using his body as a shield, his hands gripping her by the lines of blood-smeared arm she held out to him like she wasn't sure what to do with them.

"Selphie!" she gasped. "Can you see her?"

He couldn't. All he could see was Quistis, bleeding out in front of him, Quistis, blinking up at him through threatening unconciousness like the milky cataract layer of blindness-

From the stage, a snarl of command that shook like Seifer's hands:

"Don't let her use her magic!"

He glanced up in time to see Rinoa take a blow like shotgun blast to her cute little chin; Squall charged like a bull as she went down, and for one awed moment, Seifer watched his rival descend on his enemy in a chainsaw whirl of fury that he had never seen before.

It was all still there in the precisely-placed punches and kicks and back fists, the training Garden had used to hone its killers since before they hit puberty letting him land this blow here, that wet crunch of shattered knee cap there, but underneath it all-

Underneath the chained-up control of Squall Leonhart, Commander Leonhart, the berserker rage only Seifer had ever managed to elicit in him snapped the rope coils of his restraint, and he tore into them like animals now as they tried to take her away. Each throat-aimed punch he threw smashed a voice box, crushed a windpipe; he did not need Lionheart now as he bit and tore and gouged out eyeball in a free fall dangle of optic nerve cord, and when they finally took him down, it took four of them to do it.

"Rinoa!"

Quistis scrambled to her feet, using him as leverage. She gave him a push that rocked him off balance, and he pitched over onto his ass before he could make a grab for her.

"Quistis, don't!"

She was running toward that goddamned stage, that fucking death trap where they had the petite little sorceress laid out in an unconscious heap now, her sprint punctuated by another rattle of gunfire as some of the more experienced cadets fought back.

Any moment now, he was going to watch a spray of it take her down, watch her flight turn real as her dash became a hurl that took her airborne, that slender back pockmarked in dents of bullet wound entry point. He'd get to watch her die just like his fucking mother, just like that arc of ruby he'd watch splatter front row spectator face-

He went after her.

He threw elbows and fists and feet, not caring who he hit; if they were in his way, they moved, one way or another, because nothing mattered more to him than reaching her.

Seifer shoved her as the man hunkered down over Rinoa lifted his gun; she fell with a cry, putting him in the line of fire.

He could live with that. At least she was out of the way.

This close, the shot would probably kill him; he let his last thought be of her, smiling up at him through multilayered sunrise, churning ocean wave trying to claim her in gentle fingers of current that pushed her up against him.

He could still feel his face in her hands.

Muzzle flare blinded him like that long ago buckshot scatter of firework.

Seifer jerked once, and then again in surprise.

He'd missed.

Because now there was a streak of blonde like homing missile on that stage, landing an arc of kick that disarmed the cadet leaning over Rinoa and broke his wrist, and Seifer had never been so happy to see Zell Dincht in his whole goddamned life.

* * *

><p>Zell plowed into him like a wrecking ball.<p>

He stomped the jagged fray of wrist bone he could see peeking up through the flap of skin it had severed, and hammered a punch into open-mouthed jaw line that sprayed teeth like shrapnel.

One of the cadets who had helped carry Rinoa to the stage turned on him, and Zell booted him back off the stage with a wheel of crescent kick that dropped him like a rock. He heard the thump of Seifer touching down next to him, and out of the corner of his eye, Zell could see Quistis pumping blood in streamers of bright crimson down both arms, struggling through the crowd toward Irvine.

He had Selphie draped unmoving across his lap, a thin painter's line of cadmium red dangling from her mouth.

The bile in his throat burned away the lump there and swallowed his lungs, and for a moment Zell could not breathe.

He squatted next to his out cold friend trying not to see the sharpshooter's tear-streaked cheeks-

And yet, it was the only thing he could look at. In a room full of stumbling crowd and chattering gunfire, in a vast echoing cave of shrieking civilian date and gurgling death sigh, it was the only thing he could pick out, and it became his whole existence.

In that moment, Zell Dincht was nothing more than the square of tragic performance play that unfolded in front of him, except this was real, this was happening, and nothing he'd ever seen on stage even vaguely rivaled the torment on Irvine Kinneas' face.

He looked like Zell felt, like someone had punched a hole inside his heart, and taken everything inside with it as it left.

And Quistis-

Pretty little Quisty, sneaking him cupcakes, bringing him milk when he got scared and couldn't sleep-

She had those ripped-open arms and hands braced against her dying friend, fibers of Cura connecting them in strands of glowing puppet string.

Rinoa slid away from him, pulled back from the edge by Seifer, walking backward with his hands cupped under her armpits, stowing her off to one side where she would no longer be in the direct line of fire. "Trepe!" he screamed, and Zell could hear anguish like the torture carving lines of premature age into Irvine's face in Almasy's voice now. "Knock it the fuck off! You're going to kill yourself!"

She did not stop.

Somehow Squall had freed himself, and Zell saw him battling the tide surge of fleeing students now, pushing against them as he made a run for the stage, his face twisted up with the same grief that made Irvine into a hunched ball over his girlfriend. "Rinoa!"

Seifer leapt off the stage.

One of the Festival crashers stepped up to challenge Squall, apparently thought better of it, and lost himself in the flow of mob scrambling toward the exit. With their leader neutralized, they began to fall apart, most of them making for the doors just as hastily as the rest of the crowd, swinging gun stocks and blade butts, clearing pathways that gave them a clean shot at escape.

They were getting away with it.

They had killed his friend, and they were just _leaving_, just making a break for it while she bled to death in Irvine's arms, and where the _hell _was the justice in that? Where the _fuck _was the righteousness he had spent his formative years training to uphold?

His rage built a nuclear furnace inside his chest, and when the smoke reached his heart, the world hazed red around him, and Zell hurled himself from the stage with a scream.

Gentle arms caught him as he landed, and he bucked like a crazed animal, screaming as something warm and soothing and female folded itself around him, trying to curb that fire with consoling murmurs. "Let me go! _Let me go_!"

"Zell, stop. Zell, _please_." Ellone begged, snatching for his elbow as he broke free. The sudden jerk of escape that ripped him from her arms spilled him to his knees, and he stayed there blinking comprehension back into his world for a moment as she crouched down next to him.

"They're getting away, Sis." he whispered, the protest broken in half by the sob he couldn't hold back any longer.

"It's all right. I promise, Zell; it will be all right." She kissed his forehead and pressed her damp face to his cheek, and he let her hold him as he began to cry, as that nuclear furnace flared and sizzled and died and suddenly there was just pain like a gut kick, doubling him over it.

* * *

><p>Someone was pulling her away from Selphie.<p>

Through the vapor wisps of fatigue that kept trying to drown her under an ocean roar of endless white fog, Quistis heard someone yelling her name.

She did not recognize the voice.

She did not recognize anything anymore, just that flick of exhaustion like a whisper of tongue stroke along her senses, trying to get her to give up and lay down. She could not really recall what was so important anymore, anyway-it had something to do with the trickles of soggy warmth she could feel but not see caressing her wrists, and the splash of open chest cavity under her hands.

It had something to do with the man in front of her, bent over the motionless lump he cradled like a child-

She lost it.

That voice was back in her ear again, those hands around the bands of muscle in her upper arms, and suddenly she was being lifted, suddenly she was being carried, and she would not have minded, except-

There was something she was supposed to be doing. Something important.

Quistis struggled feebly.

"Knock it off. _Knock it off_! You want to kill yourself?"

No, that was not what she had been trying to do-Selphie needed her for something, needed that touch of flame core that seared her nerves with the anesthesia of third degree burn, and it didn't matter if Quistis killed herself-that she could remember, at least.

That she could hang onto, and she began to resist again.

"Stop it, Trepe! You can't do anything."

That voice, sneering at her from the back of her classroom-

That voice, calling for her to come play on a childhood beach with their mother, chasing waves with a smile on her face-

Her mother was dead.

Her mother was dead and so was her father, so were here sisters, her brothers, and that voice would not let her join them. That voice was keeping her from them, denying her that strip of sunlit sand perfumed with saline ocean smell and her mother's cookies, that beach with Selphie on it now, waving to her from behind her mother's skirts.

That beach was warm and she was cold, but that stupid voice kept talking, meaningless background hum that she did not care about, and it would not let her step out onto that breaker-masticated sand.

"You're so fucking stupid." the voice whispered, and then Quistis passed out.

* * *

><p>A glint of quicksilver shine like the mirror surface of Hyperion.<p>

A fray of ripped knuckle, chewed down to a thin arc of red.

These were the only things she saw.

_Snap_.

A glint of quicksilver shine like the mirror surface of Hyperion, showing her gnawed-up cheek tissue.

A fray of ripped knuckle, chewed down to a thin arc of red like the streamer of gore drying to brown on Selphie's chin.

_Snap_.

A glint of quicksilver shine like the mirror surface of Hyperion, showing her gnawed-up cheek tissue and empty blue glass, bleak as a starless galaxy.

_Snap_.

She looked down at the compact with its embossed coil of curlicue S curve, cold against her palm.

It was Matron's. She had given it to Quistis the day she left for her new home, so that she could admire herself no matter where she went; it was a magic compact, her mother promised, and all she had to do was picture the orphanage whenever she looked at it, and Quistis could feel her mother's love no matter where she lived now, no matter who baked her cookies and bandaged her scrapes and told her stories. She would not be lonely as long as she had it.

It was a horrible gift. She did not want to look at herself anymore.

And her mother was dead.

She clicked it shut again.

_Snap. _

Someone pounded on her door.

Quistis didn't move.

It hissed open a moment later, and she frowned. It was unlocked; that was a rare lapse. She always locked it when she wanted privacy, and there was nothing she needed more right now than this prison cell of solitary confinement dorm room, echoing her own steady breaths and nothing else.

She knew who it was without looking up; she could smell his aftershave, or his deodorant, whichever it was, a subtle whiff of masculinity she remembered from the Spring Festival. Certainly not cologne; he didn't seem like the type.

"You shouldn't have pulled me away." Quistis said without looking up.

"Tch. What did you want me to do, let you kill yourself? You weren't doing anything except ripping yourself all to shit, Quistis."

"I could have done _something_."

"You did. She's not dead yet."

No. Now she was a rat's nest of tangled-up machine cord, doing her breathing for her.

Now she was a ball of false hope in Irvine's chest, burning away the truth he did not want to face.

Quistis fisted her hand over the compact, and looked down at the swath of white tight-wrapping her arm. Underneath it, flesh like the pins and needles ghost pain of amputated limb sat in a useless lump, dead as her friend.

Dead as the heart sitting in that rib-cracked bone cage of blown-open chest wall.

The fact that her chest was still expanding, in and out and up and down-that was good enough for Irvine. Somewhere under that snaking vein network of life support cable was his Selphie, still holding on even if she needed help to do it, and that was all that mattered to him.

To Quistis, it was all just a bunch of unrealistic crap.

Because you could still breathe, even if you weren't really living anymore.

Hadn't she discovered that when she blinked herself awake on Kadowaki's far side exam table, the itch of guaze and medical grade tape the only sensations she could feel? In the fractional semisecond it took her to realize where she was and how she'd gotten there, a hole like fluttering gut wound opened inside of her, bleak and fatal and forever.

And for that semisecond, she could do nothing but curl around it, around that universe of grief that somehow balled itself up in a hard knot of fist in Quistis' stomach, an entire galaxy of anguish that opened itself like predator maw and swallowed her whole.

And then-

Nothing.

Nothing like the worthless meat slabs of her arms, just sitting there, useless to her now.

In her efforts to save Selphie, she'd lost the ability to stock even the most basic spells for the next several months, maybe forever.

And she had failed anyway.

Another piece of flawless, conscientious Quistis Trepe, shedding away to reveal the huddled, pathetic little child that crouched at the center of her being with both eyes closed, hoping no one could see her.

Seifer moved from the arch of doorframe into the center of her room.

She slid a look over to him, and then glanced back down at the argentate glow of compact beneath her fingers.

_Snap_.

She always underestimated the length of his legs, and how fast he could move; Seifer reached her in two long strides, and leaned over so he could put her at eye level. "Let me see your arms."

"No."

"What the hell do you think I'm going to do?" He scowled. "How bad is it?"

_Snap._

"There's a very good chance I won't be able to use magic again. Ever."

She could see the arch of his frown out of the corner of one eye. He stretched out both of his hands-she had never seen Seifer Almasy move so hesitantly-and then he took both her wrists in them, and suddenly, without warning, the gentle pressure of his fingers unraveled her.

She did not _deserve _to have anyone touch her, not like that, with a featherweight graze of thumb pad she could register but not truly feel through the heavy double layer of her bandages. How could he even stand to _look at her _when she had disappointed them all again, when she had let them kill Selphie and almost take Rinoa, when she had not been able to stop anything, to _do _anything-

The shallow hiss of a leaky old ventilator breathed for her friend now, measuring out each sluggish inflation of hard-won inhalation with a wheeze like slashed jugular.

And what was she going to do about it? What the hell _could _she do about it?

Nothing.

Perfect, put together Quistis Trepe, helpless.

Useless.

_Snap._

Her hand closed over that curve of pearl-sheen compact case now, and suddenly she was on her feet with it in her palm-

The world smoked red around her, and her heart became a fist, and that fist punched through her chest wall like the bullet that destroyed Selphie's pretty yellow sun dress, and she turned, she _whirled_, and let it fly.

Her compact made an arc of storm cloud across the room, and hit the far wall with a crack.

Quistis buried her face in her hands.

"Quistis-"

"_Don't _touch me, Seifer. I should have saved her."

He had straightened back to full height, and now she had to look far, far up to confront him.

"Knock it _off_. You can't save everyone, Trepe. You've been trying to do that since we were kids, and it's stupid, all right? You can't. Fuckin.' Save. Everyone. It's not your job."

"You wouldn't understand." She made her voice into something harsh and flat and arctic, because she could not cede control in front of this man again.

"Because I don't give a shit about anything, huh?" he snapped.

He was the one who had said it, not her. Quistis looked away from him. "You've never cared about anything but your own ambition, Seifer."

"_Fuck_." He ruffled his hair violently, scowling. "You're so wrong it's not even funny, Trepe." He took a step closer, lifted both hands and set them on her shoulders. He had to stoop over again to make eye contact with her, leaning in close enough that she couldn't escape that pinpoint glare of bright green. "I'm gonna' be really pissed if you sit around here moping all night over something that wasn't your fault, Instructor."

She wrenched herself out from underneath his hands. "Then leave. It's what I've wanted you to do the whole time."

His face tensed up like she'd hit him, and something that looked like, but could not possibly have been pain tightened up his eyes. It was just a trick of the light, a bulb-bent shadow flicker that distorted his features for just a moment, because it was certainly not the same raw grief that hovered in a hard tangle of red camera iris and cheerful sunshine smile just behind her heart.

Seifer Almasy didn't know a damn thing about regret. And he certainly didn't know a damn thing about this knot of pent-up anguish, waiting for the single misstep that would explode it like a grenade, throwing her in a messy, sobbing heap into his arms. Because he was the last person she wanted watching her collapse, witnessing the pieces of perfect Instructor Trepe façade cave in on themselves one by one by one-

But he was better than nothing.

He was better than that cold wasteland of empty sheet spread waiting for her.

"Seifer, just go, please." She had never sounded so weary before.

* * *

><p>Cinema lies.<p>

Grief is not a few contrived tears of soon-forgotten anguish, packed into one hundred and twenty minutes of storyline that must be moved along. It is not sob-broken eulogy and drawn-out death sequence, just long enough to convey a final wish, a last confession.

It is brittle and jagged, and it lodges in the throat. It center-stabs the heart, and boulder-weights the gut.

It cuts like a fire and burns like a knife, and it does not make any sense. Hours are months and days are seconds, and it is this-

It is this that snips away another little piece of him, everyday.

It is this he watches her go through alone, this that he does not know how to fix, because it is a problem, an obstacle, but it is not one he can shoot or stab or spine-crack, and these are the only things he is good at. He is a soldier-a _murderer_-and he does not help or heal or repair-

He destroys.

So when his arms come up, when they graze her sides and shoulders and cheeks, when they hook in a loop of embrace around her neck that pulls her flush against his chest, Seifer Almasy does not understand what he's doing.

And for a brief moment, panic spear jabs him through the throat.

Are his puppet limbs back? Is his mother standing behind him again, hating him, loving him-_controlling _him? Her pretty little wind-up toy, mechanical crank dancer, twitching out his jerky marionette's waltz just because she wants him to, just because she _can_.

How else did his cheek get like this, pressed tight to her forehead, his hand in her hair, his heartbeat pounding out a faulty drum pulse of nervous flutter against her chest? But his mother never made him do anything like this-for her he skewered a lung, shoved an arm's length of red-shine murderer's weapon through a spine, hacked an arm, a head, a leg-

She had never wanted him to stand quietly in a silent dorm room, holding a woman like she was something infinitely precious that might break. She had never wanted him to love anything, anyone like this, like his whole goddamned throat was on fire and and the flames were spreading to his eyes just because she was hurting.

It is weakness, and she would have hated it, but he cannot help it.

* * *

><p>He did not harbor any illusions.<p>

She let him hold her because she had no one else, because his were the first arms that reached out to her, because his was the first touch that razed her control, punched through her armor, and when Quistis looked up at him now, her eyes were full of the tears she kept trying not to shed in front of him.

His heart balled itself like a fist in his chest.

He brushed his cheek and then his lips against her forehead, waiting for her to let go and relax up against him, waiting for her to turn over the rigid-clutched reins of that inflexible control, and when she did, when she reached up to twist two handfuls of shirt into lumps she clutched like they were her goddamned dying wish-

Seifer wanted to die himself.

It felt like someone had gotten half their fucking arm inside of him, ripping everything as it slid in.

His grief, his pain-they didn't matter. He'd brought all that shit down on his own head after all, hadn't he? He'd followed that finger crook into the depths of hell himself, when all it would have taken was a simple 'no thanks, bitch,' when all he had ever really needed was the modicum of control Seifer Almasy had never managed to master. But hers-hers killed him.

Quistis Trepe was too goddamned good for all this. She wasn't made for a life with friends that went young and bloody to their death. She could have had her boot on the throat of the world if she wanted, multi-million corporation executive, fucking president, anything-and instead here she was with him, sobbing quietly into his shirt front.

This was all a fucking joke anyway-Seifer Almasy the puppet man, the burning man, Seifer Almasy the shattered wasteland of broken dreams and thrown-away talent.

Holding Quistis Trepe like he had any right to.

And she let him, because he could have been anyone right then; all she needed was a warm body, a soothing hand. A meaningless susurration of comfort talk, whispered into her hair.

She didn't specifically want him. No one did.

And he could understand that, you know? He fucking got it; why the hell did the past-their-prime whores end up in the streets, snorting life away inside the vomit and shit swirl of a clogged-up gutter? No one wanted anything that rode-hard and used-up and rejected.

No one wanted something that wasn't even really a human being anymore, just a hollow simulacrum of skin and bone that walked and talked and interacted like a real person but was all just three dimensional hologram projection in the end.

That was how he felt some days-most days, if he was honest with himself. He was a fucking walking talking Xerox-clever copy but just not the same fucking thing.

Not the same fucking thing at all.

* * *

><p>Her hand had gone cold and clammy and lifeless inside of his a long time ago, but he couldn't make himself let go.<p>

Her fingers threaded his like pale dead worms, pushing a shoulder twitch of shudder through his whole body, and still he couldn't unwind that prayer knot of corpse white and sun-kissed bronze.

There was a stupid, childish part of Irvine Kinneas that had convinced the rest of him that if he just kept sitting there, if he just kept holding her hand and saying her name, reminding her of everything she had to come back to in the serrated gravel of the voice he couldn't believe was his own-

Then she'd return to him. She'd come back home, to his arms and lips and bed, to a sleepy harbor town with a fantastic sunset view and an ice cream stand she liked to frequent. They still-

They still had a whole life to live out together, you know? And in a brief little interlude of moment-ten minutes, maybe-that had all changed, his entire existence altering itself around this new truth staring up at him from the blood-soaked wad of bandage layer covering the cavern of smashed bone and shredded organ that was now her chest.

She was gone. He was still touching her, still holding her-

And she had already left him. He'd poured magic and prayer and all the useless, fantastical hope left in his soldier's body into her, but her eyes had gone just as empty as his chest anyway, and now he had nothing left to keep grasping. It all unraveled like the cold wriggles of cadaver maggot that were her fingers now, and all he could do was sit there, watching it all come apart.

The machine was a formality. A procedure.

She was an animated corpse.

He had to let her go.

From the corner of his eye he could see Zell sprawled out with his head in Ellone's lap, Squall and Rinoa, corner-tucked and asleep in one another's arms-

And yet, somehow, he was all alone. His vision dimmed and blurred and then pieced itself back together, until her spectral pale cheeks were the only thing he could see. Until the whole world was an arc of bloodless lip and the shadowy dents of lash-thrown silhouette. Until the universe was nothing more and nothing less than the two of them.

If he stared long enough, hard enough, he could inject living color into those cheeks. If he concentrated just steadily enough, the cold sterility of the infirmary around him wavered like lines of television static, caught halfway between horror film nightmare and sunny ocean shore.

There was a hand on his temple, gently pushing.

He looked up into Ellone's quiet smile and soft doe eyes, and then the world rippled, broke apart, and built itself back around him in a splinter of bright yellow, a jigsaw section of sundown heat and resonant ocean swish.

He fell a long way.

* * *

><p>Balamb Harbor<p>

1 Year Ago

The sun burns a line of sweat along the brim of my hat, and I twitch it down over both eyes to dilute the glare off the water.

She's smiling at me.

For the moment, this is all I care about.

She's got a smile like the sun over my head, y'know? That was the first thing I ever noticed about her. If I had a single poet's bone in my whole body, I could write whole sonnets to it, entire novels, maybe, but my head's stuffed full of rifle layout and wind speed calculation and the range estimation that tells me how to kill a man with one bloody third eye of a shot.

And somehow, they left enough room in there for me to love her, which is a useless emotion for a soldier, y'know-first thing G. Garden tried to drill into our heads. The cadet sitting next to you might get her guts shot out one day, kids-so no fuckin' around with your neighbor, unless you can keep your dick separate from your heart.

It ain't pretty, but it's the truth.

And sometimes-

Sometimes I spend all night thinking about this. Sometimes sleep is just an elusive myth I can't quite reach, ephemeral mist just shy of my fingertips, and when I finally grasp it, when I can finally stranglehold it in my sweaty palms like it's my saving grace-

It shows me _her _guts, tangled up in a cat's cradle of ugly crimson like the sunset bleeding out beneath my feet.

I can see it in the water I hang my boots out over, diluted as an old bloodstain, and for a moment my stomach twists, coils around itself-

And then her hand slides over mine, and I can breathe again. She gives me that smile, and I push my fingers through hers, and for a long time we watch the sunset together, not saying anything. Two whole minutes of silence with Selphie Tilmitt in residence is rare enough that I smile myself, and she snatches my hat from my head with a mock little glare. "What are _you _smilin' about, Irvy?"

I lift the brim of my hat and kiss her. It doesn't last very long, but I put everything I've got into it, because there's always that little soldier's footnote of reminder in the back of my head letting me know this might be it-this slow bleed of dying sun and calm sigh of ocean water hitting dock pilings-this might be all we've got left.

When she pulls back, she's smiling so brightly it hurts my chest. "Love you, Irvy." It's a casual admission, one she's uttered a million times before, but it sledgehammers my heart anyway.

I turn on my best drawl for her. "Wahl Miss Tilmitt, what's a purty little gal like you have in mine fore t'night?"

"Matchmaking!" she squeals happily, pushing my hat back as she hunches down over her lap where she flares a set of pictures like fanned-out playing cards across her thighs.

My sigh stirs the strand of sweaty brown hanging down past my left eye. "Selphie, darlin,' are you tryin' t' fix Quisty up again? You remember how well that went over last time?"

"Well, the date _would _have gone a lot better if she hadn't kicked him in the winky."

"Selph, please don't call a man's most prized possession his 'winky.'"

"Why not, Irvy?" She's frowning down at the pictures she's started to arrange along the dock beneath us.

"We prefer somethin' more dignified. Somethin' like-"

"Russell the Love Muscle? That's what I call yours, Irvy. You want to know what Rinoa named Squall's?"

"Actually, darlin', that's pretty much the last-"

"Mr. Kitten! 'Cause he's got Lionheart so she wanted something feliney-"

"I don't think that's a word, Selph-"

"-but she didn't want it to sound too mean because she says Squall's really gentle and takes a long time. Kinda' like kitties do when they kill something! Anyway, I'm fixing up Zell this time, since things didn't work out with Library Girl. Quisty said she'd make me eat her whip if I set her up on anymore blind dates, so I'm gonna' wait for her to calm down a little bit before I try and get someone else for her."

"Maybe Quisty's got a good reason for avoidin' your blind dates."

She pushes her lips out in a pout. "Like what?"

"Like the last one was missing most of his hair and tried to lure her into his van, which he tried tellin' her was a magical portal into another world."

"That wasn't my fault, Irvy." She waves the whole incident off with a flippant wrist flick of her hand. "He didn't look _anything _like the picture on the dating website I found him on!"

This brings an arch of smile to my lips I can feel all the way to the tips of my toes, curled back from the saltwater spray dampening leather that will go dried-sweat stiff with it if I don't get it off in time.

She's irrepressible, and it's one of the things I love about her.

She shows me pictures I nod and hum and sometimes shake my head at, like I'm participating all along, when what I'm really doing is staring out over that plane of mirror surface amethyst, holding onto the reds and gray-blues the sky has already relinquished, reflecting the banged-up tips of my battle-scarred boots in rings of expanding ripple.

There's a gentle rain squall hissing down around us as she talks; it kisses my cheeks and chin and lashes so lightly I can barely feel it, landing like a splatter of teardrop on the fingers I reach out to hold again.

She sorts her pictures one-handed, smiling at me.

The sky is a vault of neutral smoke-gray above us now. Balamb's sunsets are spectacular but fleeting, leaving with the incandescent burn-out of a streaking meteor. It's a soldier's life in that overturned bowl curve of fading citrus glow over my head-bright and brilliant and going down in a blaze of glory, and I imagine the short-snipped threads of my own story ending the same way.

Battlefield casualty, choking on the blood my victims do not even have time to breathe before they die.

That's what I see in those tentacles of orange still clinging to granite cloudbank.

But there's that smile out of the corner of my eye, and I'm thinking that when the time comes, I'll try and hold on as long as possible, just so I can see it again.

* * *

><p>Infirmary<p>

Balamb Garden

Present Day

He came awake to the sound of her flat lining.


	15. Chapter 13

**A/N: So I know a couple of you are probably wanting to kick my butt right now, after becoming accustomed to weekly updates; the site was an ass last week when I tried to update and very helpfully (not!) booted me back to the login screen when I hit the save button in Document Manager, causing me to lose probably about an hour's worth of work typing up a couple of author's notes explaining some stuff and doing some final editing. This caused me to get very frustrated and say bad words and raised the necessity of talking myself out of throwing my laptop out the window, which would definitely put a damper on this fic's progress. I was so frustrated I basically just said 'fuck it, I don't want to look at this right now after that' and decided to just wait until the next week to update. So that's why this is almost a week late. Once again, I thank everyone who has commented on this story; I greatly appreciate all of your reviews and eat them up like candy. (Or as is probably a more apt description: an addict doing lines.) Updates should go back to being weekly for the next two weekends or so barring any unforseen circumstances; the very last weekend of the month I will be gone Friday through the whole weekend, so there will probably be another gap, unless I remember to post the new chapter Thursday night. After that, updating should resume as normal. (Does anyone ever notice my author's notes somehow wind up being as long as the chapter itself?)**

**Chapter Thirteen**

Balamb Garden

Balamb

Three Weeks Later

"Huh?" Zell yelled into his phone. "You serious? Ok, I'll be right there-DON'T LET ANYBODY TAKE THEM! You got it?" He hung up with a sharp click that sounded like he might have broken something off his phone again, and tossed a whiplash of one-armed embrace around Ellone's neck that was gone almost before she could feel it. "Gotta' go Sis you can use my computer if you want there's hot dogs in the cafeteria bye!"

The rambling string of his farewell all blurred together, and she was still picking through the strands of it trying to sort everything out in her head when the door to his dorm room sprang wildly open around him, and he disappeared into the hallway in a flash of blonde that streaked off like an explosion of missile.

In the swish of monochrome door frame that matched institution standard wall paint and thinning carpet and the fraying seam threads of the wool blanket he'd exchanged out for one of Ma Dincht's flashier homemade ones, Ellone could see the hall-posted guards Laguna had left behind when he departed Garden two weeks ago.

She sighed and rubbed her eyes.

She was lucky he'd only insisted on the two. Actually, she was lucky he'd let her stay at all; the Palace back in Esthar wasn't safe enough for her by his standards, and now neither was Garden, which had almost resulted in Ellone being put up in a bed and breakfast on the outskirts of Fishermen's Horizon, where she would be surrounded by small town isolation-and about a dozen of her uncle's own elite bodyguards. She'd just barely talked him out of it, pointing out that Zell had kept her as safe as any of his highly-trained guardians could be expected to, and finally, reluctantly, he had left with a stern warning for Zell to never let her out of his sight.

Apparently, that command was superseded by an influx of hot dog shipment in the cafeteria.

She didn't mind. Recent events had put her way behind in the paperwork she'd sneaked from his office on her way out the door anyway, and she took advantage of the silence now to slip them from the securely-zipped corner pocket of her suitcase, spreading them out across the eye-searing shades of Ma Dincht's quilt.

Numbers and squiggles of slipshod president's signature became the slug's trail smear of Selphie's blood, leaking from the corner of her mouth. Blank columns of empty white margin gap turned into casket-lined silk layer, pale as the expressionless mask of china doll face made up to look like her friend.

Her grief stabbed her like an edge of shattered glass, prickling under the skin.

She could remember standing there with Zell on one side, Irvine on the other, her arm through the tall cowboy's crooked wing of an elbow, wondering why, trying to make some sense of the fact that Selphie had gone first-and coming up with absolutely nothing.

She remembered rain like nips of predator teeth, eating like acid through the protective armor she put up to shield them all from her own grief, and the pressure of Zell's fingers wrapped in a tangle of choke vine around her own-

She remembered this, and she remembered the rock steadiness of Quistis' old soul eyes, aged far beyond their years, and the white slash of bloodless hand she placed in a stark contrast of comforting shoulder hold down across the trembling sleeve of Rinoa's funeral black-

She could remember all of this: Laguna Loire quietly dabbing his eyes beside the skeletal wreck of the man Cid Kramer had become, and the tight knot of Squall Leonhart's hands behind his back. Irvine Kinneas standing next to her with his hat pulled low, barely composed, and the sunlit glow of blonde that was Seifer Almasy, hovering at the far fringe of interment crowd like he wasn't sure he was supposed to be there.

Ellone could remember all of this, and yet she couldn't recall the eulogy that monotone priest droned over her bowed head, the speech falling into the ocean humming quietly along the shoreline at her back like it didn't matter.

Not a single word.

Because none of it had made any sense to her; she could dredge up a general sensation of all the usual claims, the 'it was her time' fallback all memorial services seemed to inevitably circle around to, and that too she had let melt away into the drizzle of tempest pock marking the water behind her.

Because looking at Irvine, standing over her corpse dripping tear splatters of rainwater droplet off the brim of his hat, Ellone knew this was a lie.

It wasn't her time at all.

They had been cheated.

She blinked until Rinoa's grief-wrinkled face and the loop of comforting arm Squall kept around her waist disappeared, until Irvine's ghost twitch of his former smile and Zell's choked-off sniffling smoked away and became a present day dorm room enclosing her with the whiff of bachelor cleaning habits, and the eternal hive buzz of his computer. She carried her papers over to the computer chair she'd had to remind Zell only twice this week was not a substitute clothesline for his socks-a vast improvement-and sat down, tidying the stack of work she set down in her lap.

Hyne help her she loved the man to death, but her uncle was about as useful as a child when it came to sorting out government finances. It had taken her a while to convince him that 'Lollipop Thursday' was indeed a misappropriation of city funds, and even longer to talk him into buying a proper suit for public appearances and the inevitable ambassador meetings he would need to attend. Somehow, Laguna had balked at spending hard-earned taxpayer money on clothing that would be used solely for government events, yet considered it perfectly acceptable to host a glorified children's party that was mostly just an excuse for Laguna to gorge himself (and Zell, who had been an enthusiastic supporter of the event,) on candy.

Esthar had voted him into office because he was not the slick-smiling politician they were tired of seeing, and they'd have to deal with the consequences themselves.

Still, he governed well, even if Ellone, Kiros and Ward had to occasionally and gently steer him through a few turns of the convoluted hedge maze that was government.

She let herself stare at Irvine's unslept-in bed for just a moment before she turned back to her papers, shuffling them until the one she'd left off on several days ago made its way back to the top.

Someone had doodled a penis on the corner, the head of which bore a smiling cartoon face that had all the hallmarks of Zell's bored scribblings. The thought bubble that flared out around the slit of its mouth read 'Weiner, weiner, dick, dick, give my tip a little flick,' and Ellone covered her eyes with her hand for a moment, shaking her head, trying not to smile through her startled horror.

She selected a pen from the pile scattered across the desktop, her eyes stalling on a sticky note in Irvine's ragged chicken scratch: 'Dincht, STOP looking up porn you stupid idiot; you're putting viruses on the computer. You want to look at that stuff, go to the damn site I told you about that doesn't put a bunch of those cookie things on our desktop. I'm going to stuff my hat up your ass.'

Ellone was starting to think she should have asked to borrow Quistis' computer; she was a little afraid of what she might find when she booted it up.

Luckily, nothing more shocking than a background picture of a drunk Irvine and Zell with their arms around a sour-looking Squall wearing a pink party hat popped up when she jiggled the mouse, and Ellone logged onto her e-mail through Garden's secure network.

She scrubbed out Zell's explicit artwork with a few swipes of her pen as she waited for it to load, sketching a checkerboard of black across the entire corner that she rapidly crosshatched in.

_To: Uncle L ()_

_From: Ellone A. (ellone_)_

_Subject: Form A-16118; You Do Remember What That Is, Right?_

_Hello dearest uncle of mine. First of all, yes, I am perfectly safe-please stop calling Zell's phone and threatening to 'disembowl' him if anything happens to me. I'm fine; he's taking very good care of me, I promise. _

_You're going to disapprove, but I took some paperwork on my way out and I've been sorting through everything these last few days, and I keep noticing discrepancies in the account you opened last year to pay for the accommodations of Galbadia's ambassadors since they refuse to stay at the Palace. My numbers aren't matching up; can you get Kiros to double check them for me, please? I'm not sure what's going on. We haven't had any representatives from there in a while, have we? There's also a few hundred gil missing from the research fund you set aside for Odine. I haven't finished working through all the rest of them yet. They aren't huge amounts, but I've checked them a few times now and I still keep coming up with the same numbers. You aren't shifting the accounts around for some reason, are you?_

_Let me know. Please stay safe. _

_By the way, it's 'disembowel.' _

_I love you,_

_Ellone_

* * *

><p>Quistis had spent the better part of the last several weeks avoiding Seifer.<p>

He wasn't making it easy; twice she had peeked up over the tattered spine of the library book she propped open on the table in front of her to find him standing in the entryway of the library frowning, provoking her into a whip snap of disintegrating binding that popped it up over her entire face and shuddered several pages loose.

Once, she'd found it necessary to crawl under the desk, a huddled nook of a hiding spot she had to smash both knees up against her chest to even fit into, nearly giving some poor cadet a heart attack in the process when he scraped back the chair she had occupied just a few moments earlier to find Instructor Trepe bent double beneath it like some sort of lurking childhood boogey monster. Luckily, Seifer was gone by the time she fled in embarrassment, and a quick scramble through the hallways that took her all the way down to her room did not end in any chance encounters with him.

Well, perhaps not 'chance.' He was actively seeking her out, which meant she had to flee her classroom almost as quickly as her students did, a stack of homework assignments spilling random sheafs of paper here and there as she hurried back to the room she promptly locked behind her, ignoring any knocks that shivered the door in its frame. It was all ridiculously childish of course, it was just-

She did not know how to handle this new Seifer Almasy emerging piece by piece by piece the more time she spent with him. She did not know how to relate to this stranger who wore the face and astringent sarcasm of her former student but none of the other qualities she had always associated with him, most notably his complete lack of interest in anything that wasn't himself.

She didn't know what to do with a Seifer Almasy that put her to bed after she cried herself almost comatose in his arms.

And she certainly didn't know what to do with a Seifer Almasy who nodded off in her computer chair instead of joining her, instead of taking advantage of the vulnerability she had almost expected him to exploit.

The old Seifer, the cancer in the midst of her otherwise spotless teaching record-that was the Seifer whose moves she could predict, whose next line of sexual innuendo interruption she could anticipate. And the Quistis who sparred and scolded and strove to inspire him-that was the woman she understood, Instructor Trepe with the eyes that belonged only to Squall Leonhart and not his noisy rival.

The woman she had begun to tentatively discover last night, the one who noticed how warm his arms were and the prickle of cheek stubble that snagged in her hair and scratched at her forehead-that woman was a stranger to her as well.

It was just possible that-moreso even than Seifer-it was that woman she was trying to avoid.

Seifer Almasy was not her friend. He was a childhood thorn in her side who had grown into a wet tear of dagger edge that shredded her patience like he tore through his enemies, and if she let him slip beneath her skin, he'd impale her heart.

Damned if she was going to let that happen.

She was tightening the wrist band on one of her padded leather sparring gloves when she walked through the door of the gym and into the humid sweat layer of air that choked her like a fist as she entered the room and beelined for the punching bag in one corner. This time of the afternoon, the gym was not particularly busy; just a few weights enthusiasts sprinkled here and there, pumping dumbells, straining beneath barbells loaded far beyond their ability in an attempt to impress her-

And a man in a soaked-through tank top that showed her every line of battle-molded six pack, grunting through a set of chin-ups on the free-standing bar bolted down next to the bag she was heading toward.

Quistis sighed.

"Why hello, Instructor. Fancy meeting you here."

His voice barely even indicated he was working out.

She ignored him and faced off against the pillar of rectangular gel pack in front of her, nearly as tall as Seifer with the tensile flex of human skin and the resistance of armor-plated femur bone. The first backfist she whipped around in an arc of flaring ponytail and snapping wrist joint sank in with a pop like separating spinal column, and Quistis followed it with a semicircle of crescent kick that stung her heel and vibrated all the way up her leg to her thigh.

She tried not to watch him out of the corner of her eye.

He was still going, smirking at her like he knew she was trying not to look, and the anger that kindled like a flame in her chest threw her in a frenzy of jab series against the bag that bruised her knuckles through the padding, and pissed her off even more.

Sweat sprayed in a horizontal jet stream out away from her.

She stiffened her fingers and folded the bag around a spear jab with enough force behind it to crush windpipe and keep going, chambered for a sidekick that felt like it rammed her knee cap up into the v fork of hip crease beginning to go sore like everything else-

And he was _still _doing those chin-ups.

* * *

><p>Fuck.<p>

How long did he have to keep going before she looked even vaguely impressed? His arms were on fire here, goddammit.

Seifer dragged in a shaky hiss of inhale as he hung at rest for a moment, then let it go as he hauled himself back up, edging his chin up over the bar with a very bad word he hoped she hadn't heard slip out.

That little cadet in here earlier with her short-as-fuck workout top and matching shorts had almost creamed herself watching him; he could have talked his way into her pants in a heartbeat-not that there was much to talk himself into-and from Quistis he got nothing more than a frosty little eyebrow lift that suggested complete indifference.

Fucking woman.

He dropped down to shake his arms out, and twisted his fingers together in a flick of knuckle pop that cracked like a gunshot.

"How many was that?" she asked politely, leaning against the bag to take a breath. "Ten?"

"_Fifty_." Seifer snapped, glaring at her. Really he had no fucking clue, but it sure as hell hadn't been ten, and fifty chin-ups without a break sounded appropriately god-like.

He saw a flicker of smile cross her lips, and might have begrudged her it if she hadn't been sobbing like a heartbroken child in his arms the last time he'd seen her. As it was, Seifer-very generously, he thought-let it pass, leaning his shoulder up against the arctic burn of t-junction steel pipe behind him. "I'm hungry." he announced abruptly.

"Congratulations."

He bent his lips into a grimace of a smile, letting his eyes tighten up at the corners in a staredown glare that apparently didn't impress her in the least. That was the thing with Trepe-while all the cadets around him cringed back in the scared-shitless coward flinch his presence seemed to elicit a lot, she had always stood her ground, stayed her course, giving him the this-is-beneath-me defiance glower that always made him want to grudge fuck her across his desk with the whole class watching. Just to watch her composure fail, just to hear his name slip out of her mouth in a sharp pleasure moan of sexual high bliss, the kind he was positive that impotent shitheel Leonhart could never give her-

She wasn't giving him that look now. Quistis blinked up at him through curls of glistening sweat, and inside his chest Seifer felt his heart give a thump like the start-up crank of a jackhammer. There was something there now, wasn't there? Something he hadn't seen before? Something that for a moment he thought-he wished he hoped he _prayed_-

He was an idiot. She had the same look on her face she always had when dealing with him; lip purse resignation and the head shake frustration of a teacher at the end of her rope with the biggest disappointment of her entire career, and the spark of inferno that was his hope burned his heart down to feeble cinders.

He shifted onto his other foot, lifting his arm to wipe sweat from his eyes. "There's a café down by the harbor that sells food that doesn't taste like Chicken Wuss' socks. I'm gonna' get some lunch there; want to come?"

Very carefully and without looking at him, Quistis began to peel apart the Velcro wrist flap on her left glove. "Are you asking me on a date?"

He let his smirk stay on his face long enough for her to glance up and see it. "You want me to?"

"No; of course not. And no, thank you. I'll just get something to eat here in the cafeteria."

He'd expected the rejection; there wasn't any other possible outcome, but it pinched his throat closed anyway, and now all Seifer could do was hold onto his swagger as he walked off with a shrug, letting her see just how much her rebuff bothered him. Which was a whole fucking lot, of course, but he didn't let that show in his face or stride or the clench of hold-it-together fist curl he just barely stopped on his way back toward the door.

"Wait. I'll come." Quistis called with a sigh, and he whipped back around to see her standing there with both gloves off now, eyes aimed somewhere in the general direction of her boots. The look on her face told him she had no idea why she'd accepted. "Just let me shower really quickly."

Seifer tried not to stagger like she'd just slugged him in the jaw.

* * *

><p>"So, get anymore love notes from your faggy secret admirer?"<p>

"If he were homosexual, I would think he'd be writing you instead of me." she pointed out dryly.

"I meant 'faggy' as in 'hopeless retarded sap.'" He enjoyed needling her this way; it was nice to see her stick up for him once in a while, even if she had no idea it was Seifer Almasy she was defending.

The straggling band of gut-caked beach strip uncoiled before them like a wire-fine streak of fishermen's line, and vanished off into the distance. Seifer stepped over the discarded skeleton of a recent catch-the harbor workers were tossing all their shit down onto the beach again, fuckers-and darted his head out to catch a trickle of melting ice cream slow-dripping its way down Quistis' cone.

"Excuse me." She glared at him.

He wiped his chin and smiled at her. "You missed a spot. I didn't want it to go to waste."

"Only because you paid for it."

She looked down at her dessert with a little huff of sigh that slumped both shoulders, and then held it out to him. "Here. I'm not very hungry anyway, actually."

He took it with a frown. He didn't want it either, frankly; the knot of first-date anxiety that had tied itself in a snarl of bow tie around his guts was still there, still squeezing little hints of bile flavor up against the back of his throat, and he'd just barely managed to finish and keep down the burger and fries he'd ordered earlier. That wasn't what this was, of course-Trepe'd happily fellate Save the Queen long before agreeing to anything that even remotely resembled a date with Seifer Almasy, but there was still a part of him that kept wanting to believe that was exactly what this day had turned into. He hadn't been on too many dates, honestly-most of his encounters with women were more of the one night variety, until Rinoa, at least-but Quistis was worth all of those fucking bimbos put together, and if he ever got the slightest inkling he had even a snowball's chance in hell with her, this was the kind of day he'd start with:

Laid-back lunch and leisurely beach walk, and the occasional shoulder rub of her arm brushing up against his as they strolled the edge of foam-capped water drawing squiggles of children's artwork in the sand. A half moon sliver of light like a ribbon curl of orange peel peeking up over the ocean horizon line he had to squint to see-

And Quistis walking barefoot through the waves, giving a little hop and a smile here and there when it was too cold, and that smile, that goddamned _smile_-

It had a direct fucking line to his chest, and every time it flashed, he felt an ache like sledgehammer forehand inside his ribcage.

Halfway into their walk, she'd unlaced the boots he was so used to seeing her in it was almost like watching Quistis peel off a section of her own identity, a little strip of the impenetrable rind of outer layer that made up his old instructor. Inside, there was someone just a little bit playful, someone who might be willing to bend the rules just enough to give someone like him a chance-

All right, not that fucking much. Not that fucking much by a long shot, but it was nice to dream.

Once upon a time, he'd been damned good at that. Once upon a time, that had been all he did, standing on a beach like the one he paused on now, staring up at yellow glimmer sunspot burning through a fringe layer of cloud and thinking-_knowing_-that somehow, one day, he'd burn just as brightly.

One day he'd go nuclear, and the whole world would notice.

Seifer fired the ice cream cone that had begun to splatter in a ruin of melting soft serve onto his hand in an overhand toss that carried it out beyond low tide and into deep sea.

It hit with a splash he stared at for a long time.

When he finally pulled his eyes away, they went to the dock that had begun to coalesce up ahead, the one they'd walked a lot further from than he realized, and now Seifer noticed there was a lone figure sitting at its edge, feet dangling over the side.

"Is that the cowboy?"

Quistis grabbed his arm. "Don't bother him."

"The fuck did you think I was going to do? Run up and give him a hug?"

She spent a long time staring off down the shore at the outline of her friend, and then she turned back toward the ocean, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind one ear. When she pivoted around to face it, Seifer moved with her, standing there with both hands tucked in his pockets and his heart in his throat for some reason, Quistis' arm warm against his side.

They stayed like that for a long time, the boots in her right hand swaying in little thumps of superficial flesh smack up against her leg, at the mercy of the wind picking up off the water like her hair.

"Do you believe in a god?" she asked suddenly, very quietly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Seifer watched Irvine throw something into the water. He frowned and rubbed the back of his neck. "Like Hyne?"

"Just anything. Do you believe there's a higher power out there somewhere?"

Seifer shrugged. "Not really. Sounds like a bunch of made-up shit to me. A kid gets hit by a car and all of a sudden it's Hyne's will-I think it's just a dumbass parent who wasn't watching them close enough. If everything happens because there's some all-knowing god up there controlling all of us, then why the hell do we have free will? What's the point? If I'm going to fuck up a mission and get shot through the head because Hyne or whoever thinks it's time for me to die, then why the hell do I have the choice to turn in my resignation and walk away from this all right now? I could go be a fisherman or something-then doesn't that sort of fuck up the master plan for me? And if some stupid human can cluster fuck that master plan just with a change of mind, then if there is some sort of god, he's not really all that impressive."

"I don't believe in Hyne, or anything else that might be watching over us." She kept looking out over the ocean. "Because if he was really all-knowing and powerful and just, the way he's supposed to be, he wouldn't let children get raped, or little old women become civilian casualties. The argument 'it was his will' never made any sense to me-no one can convince me some deity with the power to change anything he wants would just sit back and watch all the horrible things that happen in this world. But if there's no Hyne, then I have to assume the rest of it is untrue, too, that when we die, we're just gone. There is no better place. Do you believe that?" She wiped away a smudge of tear she couldn't stop in time with her wrist. "I was hoping…I was hoping Selphie would have somewhere better to go. Because I never thought she was much of a soldier; sometimes I used to picture her in a different life, maybe running an orphanage the way Matron did or something, and I just can't…I can't believe that she simply does not exist anymore. There has to be someplace better for people like her, doesn't there?"

Selphie Tilmitt was another rat-chewed corpse in the ground, her eyes maggot-eaten down to the skull.

But he didn't say that to her.

He picked his words more carefully than he'd ever had to before; Seifer Almasy did not think out his replies, firing off insults and harsh truths and heartless jeers like he didn't give a shit, because he didn't-if some shaking little second year couldn't handle the goddamn heat, he needed to get out of the fucking fire and choose a career that didn't sometimes involve blowing off people's heads for money. He wasn't going to bother himself about hurting some little twizzle dick's feelings; he had ass to score and a future to build, renown to cultivate; Seifer Almasy was going to fucking _be _someone, and you didn't claw your way to the top worrying the whole way about all the dreams you'd crushed and the hearts you'd heel-stomped. Ambition wasn't some pretty little gift-wrapped offering someone handed to you with a heart full of fucking rainbow after all-you brought it down with your teeth in its throat, and came up with a neck-snap shake of this-is-_mine _ownership, and then you made it into a weapon, and you used that weapon to break the whole goddamned world if that was what you had to do.

And then sometimes the world broke you instead, and left you on a beach next to a woman your cracked-all-to-shit heart had somehow managed to open enough to let in, wondering how to explain that her friend was just another dead soldier that world wouldn't give a shit about as soon as some celebrity stepped out in her hideous-as-fuck new outfit.

"Do you remember what Matron used to tell us? That sometimes people had to 'go away' like our parents did, but that they became stars so they could watch over us and make sure someone was there to love us because they couldn't do it anymore?"

She smiled, but her eyes were still shining, still brimming, and it made his chest ache. "Are you telling me that's what you believe?"

"It used to creep me the fuck out, thinking all these little eyes were watching me. Especially when I did something bad, and then I'd think 'oh fuck, now Matron's gonna' know because my parents were watching and they'll tell her.'"

"I noticed it didn't stop you from misbehaving."

"Yeah, because you know what I think? If those stars are really fucking people-their souls or some shit or whatever-I don't think they're up there to judge us. I think they're just waiting, maybe." It was the sappiest fucking thing he'd ever said, but it made her smile.

"For who?"

"For the cowboy. Whoever the fuck they left behind."

Quistis' smile softened her whole face. "I know you don't really believe that. But…thank you." She wiped surreptitiously under her other eye.

He slipped his hand into hers, and this time she let him keep it there.

He didn't let delusion carry him away this time, either; the light pressure of her fingertips, supple as a woman's but callused as a soldier's, was only there because she needed another human being, because even the great and indomitable Quistis Trepe couldn't weather the loss of someone she gave a shit about as stoically as she'd probably thought she could. Tomorrow, he'd say something that pissed her off and she'd look at him like he was something she needed to wipe off her shoe. Tomorrow, she'd go back to pretending he didn't exist, and he'd hover at the border of her life like a goddamned whipped dog.

But tomorrow, he might take a knife to the spleen; tomorrow, she might go down with a bullet to the chest, because that split second of fatal strike was how long it took the entire world to change.

Hadn't he learned that when one of the Liberi Fatali themselves went down in a heartbeat of moment that turned into forever? Selphie had been one of the heroes, one of the good guys who always made it through to the end of the story in the fairytales his mother read him. He used to think protaganists were untouchable, because he'd planned on being one himself, and anyone who thought they could take him was getting a cold hard foot of Hyperion shoved up their ass. That was just the way things _were_, goddammit.

And then they killed his mother, and Seifer began to understand that the stories he'd used as the springboard to his whole life-

They were all a load of crap.

Heroes and villains and the gray-area asshole who'd tried to be both-fate didn't give a shit. It killed indiscriminately and left devastated loved ones to sort everything out.

That was the only reason she was standing here with her fingers tucked into his, because Quistis, like all the rest of them, was still trying to figure out how that could be true.

He knew, because some nights when he lay in bed watching the shadows play and dance and eat one another, he wondered the same goddamned thing. How the hell could their mother have been so fundamentally _wrong_? The heroes won. Period. The bad guys did not wear mother's faces like masquerade ball costume mask, and they did not get cracks at second chances they didn't deserve.

They died horribly.

And everyone else lived happily ever after. Selphie and her cowboy, Pubes and his princess, Wuss and his goddamned hot dogs, Quistis and some man who deserved her-

They all rode off into the sunset together. And Seifer Almasy the villain, Seifer Almasy the bad guy-he burst into flames or got eaten by a dragon or dropped over a cliff or some shit. He didn't live to see the end of the tale, the final yard of narration spun out in the satisfactory finale he used to stay up late thinking about. The goddamned fairytale wasn't his anymore; he'd shit all over it the second he let that smile and finger crook and voice like acid on open wound lure him in, pull him down-

But that didn't seem to matter. Messenger Girl had taken his place, because the stories were backward, they were _shit_-

And what did that mean, anyway? That he was going to get the happily-ever-after instead?

He didn't think so.

So he knew why she was still holding the hand of a man she could barely stand. She needed an anchor, a tether line back to reality-a harsh reminder that the stories her mother pumped her head full of when she was a stupid little kid were all a bunch of goddamned lies.

It still gave him the fucking warm and fuzzies like he couldn't believe.

The polish on her fingernails matched the color of her toes where they peeked up through undercurrent spirals of wave.

On that distant dock backlit in fading noon glow, Irvine Kinneas was still sitting there, his hat perched at the exact angle she always used to wear it at when she snatched it away from him.

* * *

><p>His name was Joss Malcolm, 5th year.<p>

He'd been temporarily stowed in one of Garden's sub-level holding cells until he could be transferred over to D-district, and this was where Squall met him now, the wired-shut jaw Zell had broken screwed down tight as a winch across from him.

Squall could not quite make himself believe Joss would reach the deep-desert fortress alive.

Homicidal fire burned through his chest, and sparked flame in his eyes. This bottom-feeding _creep _had taken Selphie from them all, had slapped Squall Leonhart rudely in the face with the truth that you could hold the whole world at arm's length, you could push and push and _push _until you thought you'd shoved them all safely out of your heart-

But it didn't hurt any less when you realized a few had slipped through the cracks, and taken up the only space not occupied by Rinoa Heartilly. When you suddenly, achingly understood that losing a friend, letting go of a comrade-

It felt like Lionheart gone unused dull, hacking off a limb. It felt like dipping his whole heart in acid, and letting it dissolve inside his chest and drip down through his ribs to buzz in a static electricity sizzle of pain in his gut that never went away.

It made him want to hurt this bastard as much as he'd hurt all of them, as much as he'd hurt _Rinoa_, crying into her pillow each night because she blamed herself-

He slid a sheet of paper over the table between them.

He couldn't think about any of that right now. Now, he had to be Commander Leonhart, stone cold stoic authority figure, emotionless machine with the eyes that did not care and the heart that didn't feel. Now, he had to pretend he was still that emotionless weapon of a soldier bred to kill without thinking, shiny new model rolled off the assembly line that was Garden.

But inside-

Inside, Squall felt the truth of what he truly was snare his chest like a cage, and smoke the edges of his heart with electric feedback that hummed in his skull like the blood-pound crash of an entire ocean.

This man was a cancer.

He was a surgeon.

He folded his hands on the table in front of him. "Who were your accomplices?"

Joss fumbled the pen Squall offered him into the clumsy mitt grip of the bandage looping his left hand, and began to scribble. A few moments later, he laid the pen aside and pushed the paper back over the table toward Squall.

_I can't tell you that. You'll kill them. They were just doing what they thought was right._

Squall's jaw tightened until he felt his teeth creak warningly. "Killing a rank A SeeD who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time was the 'right thing to do'?"

Joss nodded toward the page Squall's hand had started to convulse shut around, and he relaxed his fingers enough to push it back.

The pen began to scratch again.

_I'm sorry about Tilmitt. But that was me; none of the others had anything to do with that. I panicked and killed her, and I take full responsibility for doing that. But commander, Rinoa Heartilly is a liability and you know that. We had the safety of all of B. Garden in mind when we decided to do what we did. _

"You tried to intercept the weapons the last SeeD exam was designed to protect." It wasn't a statement. "Several cadets and instructors died during it."

_Yeah. That was us. And we regretted what we had to do, but we had no choice. Garden's a military institute; we couldn't storm in with a couple of guns and hope for the best. We were going up against superior numbers. We needed to catch everyone by surprise with superior firepower. _

"You understand that what you did was treason, punishable by firing squad?" Squall asked coldly.

_I understand that. I've always understood that. Like I said earlier, I take full responsibility for everything._

"Who were your _accomplices_?" he snapped.

_I'm sorry. I'm not letting them take the fall for something that was all my idea. And the cadet who died the day before-that was me too. I tried to cover it up, but I healed him too much, and when he took off, I panicked. That was why we acted too quickly. We didn't want to hurt anyone; we just wanted to protect Garden. If we'd taken the time to do it the way I initially planned, no one would have died. _

No one except Rinoa, anyway. No one except the woman who was his whole life, dying in his arms in the same slow bleed fatality Selphie had spilled down her chin and her dress while Irvine screamed himself hoarse underneath her.

Squall scraped his chair back and nodded to the guard hovering in the corner. "I'm done."

For once in his life, Squall Leonhart was glad the government moved at approximately the pace of an elderly snail, limping along like an injured wreck of hitchhiker thrown from his ride, stalling and stammering excuses, drowning him slowly in the forms of inevitable postponement that came with applying for a death sentence.

It gave him time to switch over to a new method, another technique that would succeed where weeks of questioning had failed.

It gave him time to convince himself he needed Seifer Almasy's help.

* * *

><p>He tapped his boot on the corner of Leonhart's desk, wondering why the hell the prick had called Seifer to his office when he wasn't even there. The feedback screech of the overhead P.A. system had jolted him out of some sissy daydream involving Quistis and a house by the sea, goddammit. She was waiting for him to come home on a porch swing that creaked like the frail snap of old bone, her toenail-painted feet up on the splintered swingarm of its padded limb and a smile on her face-<p>

He rubbed his eyes.

What a bunch of shit.

Seifer hooked his fingers together behind his head and scanned the office, taking in the bright splashes of color that were obviously the personal touches of Squall's princess and not that frigid fuck himself. Canary yellow penholder and the patchwork hippie design of garish wall hanging; picture frame of ain't-that-fucking-sweet bubblegum pink and the multi-colored checkerboard of sticky-note reminder slips in a thousand different shades of eye searing.

"Tch." He leaned back in his chair.

The door slid open and he jumped, almost sending the whole thing crashing over backward; Seifer's right hand flashed out to grab the edge of Pubes' desk and brought him back upright, the legs of his seat hitting the floor with a thump.

Squall came around his desk to sit opposite him, bland-faced like he hadn't just witnessed his rival almost dump himself on his ass.

Seifer shot him a nasty look just in case he was thinking about saying anything, and re-fastened his fingers. "What did you want?"

"The cadet who shot Selphie is on Garden's basement level right now, in a cell waiting transfer to D-district."

He let his frown bunch up the skin around his scar. He failed to see what that had to do with him. "Yeah, so? Why's that my problem?"

"We need to know who his accomplices were, and he won't answer any of my questions."

Seifer sneered. "Maybe if you ask him real nice next time and swallow. I hear that usually works."

Squall picked up a stack of paperwork and tapped it against the edge of his desk, bringing it all into a row of perfect alignment that he stared at for a long, long time, the muscles in his jaw twitching. "You remember what you did to me during the war? After the parade, when Mat-Edea wanted to know what the purpose of SeeD was?"

Naw; Leonhart strung up on the wall while his mother whispered her promises of nighttime reward that he burned for-feared-wanted like a desert-stranded man craving water-that had all completely slipped his fucking mind.

Squall looked at him now, and those bright blue eyes pierced him like a sword, skewered him like that knife edge of icicle she'd shoved through his gut; they were cold like he remembered, but along their edges flickered zealot fire, chewing through the festering pus pocket of resentment Seifer could see in the moment of stare down Garden's commander pinned him with.

Slowly, he unwound his hands.

He brought his elbows down onto his knees.

"You want me to torture this guy?"

"The rest of them are still out there. They killed Selphie."

"Look, Leonhart, I'm real sorry the Festival Committee won't be able to throw anymore shitty parties for a while, but-"

"This isn't a _joke_." Squall hissed tightly.

He fucking knew that, didn't he? Maybe Seifer and Messenger Girl hadn't exactly been the bestest of goddamned pals, but she was a part of the childhood that had been the best fucking time of his whole shitty life, and maybe she'd irritated the hell out of him-

But she'd made Quistis laugh, and that was reason enough for him to rip that asshole's head off with his bare hands for taking that away from her.

"They could be planning something else. They're not going to stop until Rinoa's gone."

"She's your responsibility now, not mine."

"Selphie died because she happened to be in the way; think about it, Seifer. Who's going to get in the way next time? It could be any one of us." He paused for a moment, not breaking eye contact. "It could be Quistis."

And in a moment of dawning sunrise understanding, Seifer realized-

The fucker _knew_.

All his cringing, shameful feelings for her-Seifer Almasy, falling for one of the Liberi Fatali themselves, Seifer Almasy, yearning after one of Balamb's own greatest heroes, what a fucking _joke_-all laid out between them like decaying corpse flesh stinking up the room. Apparently, he was so goddamned transparent even Squall fucking Leonhart had managed to figure out this new monopoly she had on all the emotions he could have sworn he didn't possess.

And now it was Squall fucking Leonhart pushing the buttons, controlling all the back-and-forth power struggle that had been going on between them since they were kids; he knew exactly where to hit now, exactly which soft spot of Achilles tendon would fold him like a cheap card table, and he wielded that knowledge like a terminal swipe of Lionheart.

His anger charred his throat. He was _done _being manipulated, jerked around at the mercy of his puppet master, laughing as he screamed, smiling as he tangled himself in the silver twine of his own strings, and slowly began to strangle.

But a part of him-

A part of him got it. A part of him understood, because if it was Quistis standing on the same tenuous ground Rinoa teetered on now, he'd get his teeth in the throat of the whole fucking world and rip and rip and rip if that was what it took to keep her off the edge. If he had to topple governments and kill innocents all over again-

He'd do it. One man, one insignificant little human being-that was nothing. And Seifer Almasy didn't have a soul left anyway, right?

Really, when you got right down to it, when you dug around just a little past the exterior, Squall Leonhart and Seifer Almasy were just the same on the inside after all. Leonhart loved a woman enough to do anything; Seifer burned with the same goddamned fire.

Yeah. Inside, they were almost fucking identical, just like those twin stripes of healed scar tissue ruining the same patch of forehead skin.

He'd always sort of suspected that, deep down.

* * *

><p>His mother taught him everything he knew about torturing another human being. The trick to it was, you didn't just inflict physical pain; a high pain threshold and the training to compartmentalize it all negated all of that shit anyway. A broken finger here, an uprooted nail bed there-kid's stuff.<p>

This guy didn't have anything to lose; Seifer knew it, he knew it. The fucker was dead anyway.

It was all in letting them want that death. See, the most important thing his mother had taught him about breaking anyone was you had to interject a little mind fucking in between shattering metacarpal; you had to draw everything out until they just wanted it done with, until they just begged for it to be fucking _over_.

So when he fisted a knot of unwashed hair in his hand and slammed the kid's broken jaw down into the metal-trimmed corner of interrogation table by way of greeting, that was just his warm-up.

He came into a wide-legged stance over that man's huddled form with his hands behind his back and his trench coat dripping gore.

He was waiting for Joss Malcolm to look up and see everything that was going to happen to him in the eyes he made into something hard and predatory and I-don't-give-a-shit-about-your-worthless-little-life cold, and he was waiting for himself to get angry.

Some twists like Ultimecia liked this sort of shit, but torture wasn't like fighting. There was some honor in that, in knowing the other guy was trying to kill you so you sure as shit better make sure you killed him first, and when you spiked him with a jab of stiffened spear hand, that was because he hadn't been fast enough, strong enough, _good _enough to beat you. When you pulled his guts out drawing your weapon from his spine-well, fucker'd tried to do it to you first.

Predator eat prey. That was the way the world went.

This was just fucking sick.

So he let himself picture Selphie Tilmitt doing nothing more sinister than stand on a stage flapping her yap into a microphone. He let himself see her belly flop off that stage in an arterial spray that spewed like a blast of confetti out over the crowd, and then he let himself watch the scene that choked him most of all:

Quistis Trepe, proud and strong and unbendable, bent over her dresser like an old woman. Quistis Trepe, holding onto the front of his shirt because her legs didn't work anymore, because they'd gone grief numb under her and Seifer was the only thing keeping her standing.

And when Joss Malcolm struggled up to his knees holding his leaking, misaligned chin, Seifer kicked him in it hard enough to pop a bulge of snapped jawbone out the side of one cheek.

His sobs came out slurred and muffled.

He waited for a long time, letting him think it was over, letting him convince himself they'd put him back in his cell where he belonged waiting his execution. He waited until the high beam shine of those kid's eyes had gone almost hopeful, and then Seifer yanked him to his feet, and sat him roughly down in that chair with its red-brown strings of drying blood.

The knife he had in his left front pocket came open with the _snick _of switchblade release button, and he aimed the point right at Joss Malcolm's right eye.

Funny thing about the human mind; persuade it beyond any reasonable doubt it was going to be dead soon, and it still went into the screaming whiplash of head arc that tried to carry its face out of the way in time to keep from being blinded. He waited with his hands screwed down tight through layers of hair, his fingers digging like pinpoints of needle prick into Joss's scalp, and when the kid finally stopped struggling, when he began to relax again, convinced Seifer didn't really have the balls to do it, he sliced a superficial nick across the right eyelid.

Just enough to let him feel it shiver down through the lid to his eyeball, sending him into another burst of hysterical panic buck.

The defecation stink of shit-smell wave that hit Seifer like a hammer between the eyes made his gut heave.

But his mother had taught him to ignore all of that, so he just sat there, waiting and waiting and waiting, that knife edge chiseled into skin like tissue paper, his hand steady as a fucking rock.

The trick was to not actually take his eye; the real sleight-of-hand master stroke was just to make him think you were going to, real slowly.

* * *

><p>At 0400 hours the next morning, an elite SeeD squad penetrated the heart of Balamb in an unofficial mission that Squall did not record. None of their names made it into the annals of Garden's operation ledgers; he did not note their ranks or the equipment they had taken, or the money this was costing Garden, and he did not tell anyone, even Rinoa, where three heroes and one notorious traitor had disappeared off to.<p>

He just sat there at his desk with his head in his hands, watching Seifer Almasy vomit into first floor bathroom waste basket, because he couldn't make it to his dorm room in time.

Inside his chest, anguish spread like anesthesia, numbing everything.

He angrily wiped away the overflow of moisture in his eyes.

* * *

><p>The bundle of C4 Zell strapped to the door of a root cellar still intact beneath the rot-eaten sag of a condemned old house blew it inward, and decapitated the watchman they had posted just inside.<p>

He came through the smoke swinging. The reptilian quick blur of his elbow strike smashed a larynx, then came up and around in a doubled-over knot of solid bone that broke a rib. He got a knee into the man's solar plexus hard enough to snap off the nub of xiphoid cartilage riding his sternum, and then Hyperion flashed out over his shoulder in a blur that axed all the way down through the man's head and into his throat.

There were four of them, fourteen of the murderers who had made his friend into an empty shell that carried around the lanky body of Irvine Kinneas but none of the spirit.

He tore into them like they were evenly matched.

The cellar became a slaughterhouse.

He slipped in blood and tripped over rope coils of intestine; he kicked and punched and maimed and _hated_-oh Hyne how he fucking hated them all, and the sibilant caress of inner voice whisper told him to make it last, draw it out. He couldn't do that because it would put his friends at risk, Quistis in the corner surrounded by three of them, Irvine in the center trying to take them all on with his bare hands, because Exeter was not personal enough, because a swift death shot to the head did not make up for the bright light they had extinguished when they killed Selphie Tilmitt.

But he wanted to. He wanted them to feel the same damn pain he woke up to each morning, the same anguish he could see reflected in all their eyes except Irvine's, because he would not even look at them.

This rapid clean-house-it wasn't _enough_; they could die like she had, but the rest of them all had to go on living, you know? And sometimes that seemed a hell of a lot worse than dying. Sometimes it seemed like they'd gotten on the short end of the fuckstick when they laid her to rest beside that thundering shoreline they'd all grown up next to, the one Selphie and their mother would never get to enjoy again.

Sometimes he looked at Irvine, this man who was a brother to him, and he thought killing them was a kindness compared to what they'd done to him.

* * *

><p>Seifer back slashed Hyperion through the neck of the cadet who'd somehow gotten Quistis on her back, his hands around her throat, and watched his head bounce on the red-streaked concrete beneath her hair.<p>

He didn't have time to help her back to her feet, because someone swung the handle of their blade up against his temple hard enough to ring his head like a gong, and he staggered and went down.

The room bulged and then shrank around him.

He heard Hyperion land with a distant bell clang, and then someone's hand was in his hair, and he watched blood-splashed blade edge go too-close blurry up against his nose.

So this was what it looked like from the other side.

Quistis came to her feet in a smooth kip that unfurled Save the Queen like an extension of her body, spiraling it around the weapon an inch from his left eye. She yanked, sending it flying, letting it go with a flick of wrist snap that pulled her whip loose, and now that coil of barbed leather slid around his attacker's neck, and cut through it like soft cheese.

His throat gaped like flayed-open fish belly.

She was already gone, moving on, killing as she advanced, each step a death and each death a step, and by the time he blinked the world back into semi-focus around him once more, he'd lost her in the crush of ally against ally, SeeD versus SeeD.

Seifer waded into the center of it all, stabbing, slicing, gutting, praying she wasn't one of the lifeless hands that shifted under his boots, and cracked underneath his lunge of riposte.

* * *

><p>Once upon a time, Quistis Trepe was a child who played house on a front porch that smelled like hydrangea.<p>

Once upon a time, instructor number 14 was a young woman who still remembered what her teeth looked like unstained by battle. They were pristine and white, unsoiled like her innocence, and they did not wear crimson like the sloppy watercolor she proudly presented to her mother.

They gleamed back at her from a mirror where her face was whole and her eyes ingenuous, and they showed off a smile that didn't have to be forced or faked or coaxed.

That mirror wouldn't recognize her anymore, stomping knee joint and opening brachial artery, jagged-shattering collar bone and breaking c6 vertebrae. What would it see if she looked into it now?

The reflected shine of revenge flame licking away at her eyes until there was nothing else left.

The realtime of present day battle played alongside a corkscrew of memory scented like salt and colored yellow: yellow beach and curve of lemon slice sun, and star-stitched sheet pattern fluttering on a line that bisected her mother.

Open-mouthed scream, pried wide with the tongue of Hyperion.

Branch-shaded dune crest, and the weight of open hardback in her lap. Blonde little boy waving duct-taped knight's sword, his smile brighter than the sky above her.

Ululating war scream, cut short on a choked-off gurgle. Headless dissenter corpse on its knees, spitting blood like a fountain.

A brown-haired little girl playing tag with her mother, circling a sullen little boy sitting in the sand with his arms crossed. Cheek-stuffed glutton face, raining cake crumbs when duct-taped knight's sword hit him in the back of the head, and he opened his mouth to cry.

Her friend on his knees in the circle of death he'd sketched out around him, his hat dripping blood and his eyes dripping tears.

Quistis snapped all the way back into the present.

Zell crouched next to Irvine with his arms around the taller man's shoulders, yellow hair spikes and black cheek tattoo-_what's black and yellow and cries like a baby_-

And something clicked like a corresponding puzzle piece in her mind.

She looked around at red-sprayed walls and high-piled cadaver mound, accounting for everyone, Zell and Irvine in the middle, Seifer bent over a dusty crate trying to catch his breath, and then she walked calmly outside with her whip over one shoulder, and threw up into the hedge of untended scrub brush beside the door.

* * *

><p><strong>quistis_trepe_14: I want to meet. <strong>

**3877SA: why?**

**quistis_trepe_14: I didn't really want to before. I was curious who you were, what you looked like, if I knew you-but I had an illusion that I wanted to hold onto, and I didn't want it broken by reality. **

**quistis_trepe_14: But I was recently reminded that sometimes life is over in a heartbeat, and now, avoiding something I'm afraid might disappoint me seems stupid. Maybe you're exactly what I'm hoping you are, and maybe you're exactly the reason I initially decided it was better not to meet. Either way, I want to know. **

**3877SA: i'm not. trust me; you've probably got some pretty little prince charming all drawn up in your fucking head, right? that's not me.**

**quistis_trepe_14: I don't care what you look like.**

**3877SA: that's not it. you don't want to know who i really am.**

**quistis_trepe_14: You should let me decide that.**

**3877SA: i'm sorry your friend died. but this isn't a chick flick, ok? i'm just an idiot who got a stupid idea in his head one day-i'm not a fucking poet or an artist. you're not going to run into my arms the second you see me because you realize i'm everything you ever wanted.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Why did you start all of this anyway?**

**3877SA: because i**

**3877SA: shit. because i'm stupid or something, all right? **

**quistis_trepe_14: Do you have feelings for me? **

**3877SA: don't go there.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Why not?**

**3877SA: because if i answer that honestly, and you find out who i really am, i'm going to be missing a whole lot more than my dignity. **

**quistis_trepe_14: You're entitled to your feelings, no matter who you are. **

**3877SA: just don't ask me that, all right? **

**quistis_trepe_14: Will you meet me?**

**3877SA: no.**

**quistis_trepe_14: I'll be down at the harbor tomorrow night, on the docks. 2100. I hope you'll come.**

**3877SA: i won't be there, instructor. you can count on that.**

He logged off a split second after he realized his mistake, in the half-blink of moment where his brain couldn't quite catch up to the finger he smacked down hard against the enter key, and just let it happen.

Seifer slumped forward with his head in his hands.

On the other side of Garden, Quistis Trepe felt the axis of her world slowly tilt off-balance.

**A/N: When Zell is speaking to Ellone in the beginning of the chapter, that's supposed to be all run together to make it sound more babbling, but for some reason if I do that, the site cuts most of it off and then it doesn't make any sense. So that is why it's not really punctuated properly, because it was supposed to be one big jumble of a sentence.**


	16. Chapter 14

**A/N: All right, so I promised I would dedicate this chapter to my sister, who came up with the porn names later on. Yes, you read that correctly, porn names. I turned to her one day at work and asked what she thought were some good porn names, and after explaining exactly what I needed them for, she suffered a stroke of brilliance, and voila, a couple of adult film star pseudonyms were born. So, Maegan, this one's for you. Thanks for the inspiration, ya' screwed up little pervert.**

**As always, thanks to everyone for your comments. They are more appreciated than you will ever know.**

**Chapter Fourteen**

Balamb Garden

Balamb

He dressed himself each morning because it was what she would have wanted him to do. Neatly-tied ponytail and snugged-tight gloves, carefully-arranged cowboy hat and the bitter adhesive of his stuck-on smile-

These were the things he made himself keep showing the world.

These were all the things she had loved about him: exaggerated drawl and shoulder-slung rifle butt, Casanova smile and its softer version, the one that was all hers-

He kept them preserved like historically-significant museum pieces, going through all the motions with a smile on his face and a glint in his eye that used to be genuine.

Because one day he would do these things-_be _these things-because he wanted to. One day, he would swing one leg down over his bed and arch the snarl of kink from his back because he was ready to face his day, and not simply to avoid the chest weight of grief he sometimes thought he might die beneath. One day, the smile he faked for his friends wouldn't strain his lips or hurt his heart, and one day, he'd finally wake up glad to feel the air in his lungs and the sun through his blinds.

A month after her death, he stayed up all night watching her home movies. Fuzzily rendered images of their life together, narrated off-screen by her cheerful little voice-montages of Zell pestering Squall and Squall throwing pens, Rinoa in Zell's Chocobo costume and the aftermath of the Great T-Board Crash of '72. Unamused Quistis eyes, looped in the spirals of experimental makeover Rinoa and Selphie had forced on her-

He watched them all.

And when she stepped out from behind the camera to wave or smile or scold someone for ruining her shot, Irvine wiped his eyes and kept going.

He kept seeing: Zell humping Squall's leg when he wasn't looking, Squall chasing Zell, Rinoa posing with index and middle finger flared out in a v of peace symbol she used to frame her right eye, Selphie wearing his hat, yelling for Zell to hold the camera straight-

Quistis, good-naturedly putting up with Selphie and Rinoa getting her ready for another SeeD ball.

When Zell walked in halfway through the night, he sat down without a word, and they watched the rest together in silence. Sometimes he could feel the other man there the way an amputee senses a ghost limb, but mostly he was lost in his own world.

Mostly, he was drowning in her eyes, open now and looking out at him from the screen of his television set.

That smile-

His numb chest cracked open a little, and started to bleed.

That smile was her legacy. It hung like a chain around his neck when she first died, millstone dragging him down beneath the surface of that grief ocean he could never seem to struggle free of, but now-

Now, he could start to see a day when it might dangle like costume piece jewelry from his neck, almost weightless, a happy little reminder of another time, a different life. She wouldn't want him to be this hollow void of a man-hadn't she always told him she wanted him to be happy?

Selphie Tilmitt had wanted the whole world to be happy. There'd never been any clause determining that happiness was only applicable while she was still around. She just wanted it for everyone, because that was the kind of person she'd been.

He wiped away another tear, and saw Zell do the same out of the corner of his eye.

* * *

><p><strong>quistis_trepe_14: Seifer.<strong>

Quistis waited a long time for a reply, tapping her fingers on her keyboard.

**quistis_trepe_14: Seifer, if you wanted me to think you weren't around, you probably should have set your status to 'offline.'**

**3877SA: the hell do you want? **

**quistis_trepe_14: Just to talk. **

**3877SA: i've got something more important to do.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Like?**

**3877SA: i thought i'd mainline some toilet bowl cleaner. i hear it kills faster than the coffee here. **

**quistis_trepe_14: I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable.**

**3877SA: then stop trying to talk to me, instructor. **

**quistis_trepe_14: I just don't understand what you were doing. Was it all a joke?**

**3877SA: pretty fucking unfunny one, wasn't it? **

**quistis_trepe_14: Is that what you're saying it all was, then? A joke?**

**3877SA: no, trepe. it wasn't a fucking joke.**

**quistis_trepe_14: Then I don't understand. Are you**

**quistis_trepe_14: Do you**

**3877SA: in love with you? that what you're trying to ask?**

**quistis_trepe_14: I don't know.**

**3877SA: the answer's no. it started out because i was bored one day. you were reading that stupid ass book and everything in it was shitty as hell, but when you were reading it, you looked happy like you used to when we were kids. so i took it. **

**3877SA: i guess**

**3877SA: i just wanted you to be happy. **

She didn't even know what to say to that, and by the time her mind had pulled itself together enough to formulate a reply, he'd already logged off.

* * *

><p>Presidential Palace<p>

Esthar

That jerk was on tv again.

"The sorceress Rinoa is a danger to everyone-to B. Garden harboring her in their midst like she is just another harmless, normal young woman, and to everyone in Balamb-to everyone in the _world_. Just a month ago, one of the Liberi Fatali themselves died because the only true patriots left in B. Garden had the courage to step forward and try and put an end to it all, and Selphie Tilmitt unwisely tried to resist out of a misplaced sense of loyalty for her friend. She was a hero; she didn't have to die."

Good thing that asshole wasn't letting facts get in his way or anything; Laguna aimed the remote sitting at the corner of his desk with one hand, typing awkwardly with the other. The sheet lightning shimmer of the screen taking up his entire northern wall vanished in a diagonal wipe of expanding black that took all color with it, and the silence preferable to that idiot's sermonizing dropped itself like a funeral shroud.

He set the remote back down with a sigh. He could strongarm Trabia Garden into letting loose of its assault on B. Garden, but even Esthar's president couldn't shut their yammering wank of a headmaster up.

Laguna leaned back in his chair, his eyes going back to the screen it had taken a good half hour for him to figure out how to turn on, with Kiros in the background jeering and egging him on, Ward smiling silently from the couch he'd spilled completely over the side of.

Some damn help they were; Ward had left mustard stains on the couch it took him a whole hour to remove, though mostly because he'd initially tried to get them out with something he thought was stain remover but turned out to be bleach. Which, apparently, you weren't supposed to use on green fabric.

Kiros had just watched from his chair the whole time, bouncing pieces of popcorn off Laguna's head whenever he turned it the other way.

Why had he remained friends with them for the last two decades of his life again?

_To: Uncle L ()_

_From: Ellone A. (ellone_)_

_Subject: Re: Form A-16118; You Do Remember What That Is, Right?_

_I fnished going over the other accounts. Kiros was right; they're all off by a little bit. It looks like someone has been siphoning off a little bit at a time to try and avoid raising suspicion; it could have been going on for a while now and I just didn't notice before, depending on how much they've been taking this whole time. A hundred gil here and there wouldn't raise any red flags. _

_We're going to have to open an internal investigation into all of your cabinet members and aides. I'd suggest SeeD since private investigation would be the best way to go to make sure no one gets suspicious before we catch them, but no one except B. Garden will hire out to us with everything that's going on, and anyone from there that we could trust would be too conspicuous. _

_Put Kiros on it. He'll do a good job, and you let him sit around too much. He gets bored. _

_I'm still fine, before you ask. Everything is quiet here. I'm worried about you; I saw on the news yesterday the riots outside the Palace are getting worse. Please, please be careful._

_Love,_

_Ellone_

He cracked his knuckles, and set all ten fingers down across the keyboard.

_To: Ellone A. (ellone_) _

_From: Uncle L () _

_Subject: Re: Form A-16118; You Do Remember What That Is, Right?_

_I think maybe you should be president instead of me. You're a lot better at this kind of thing, my little Loney Bear. I know you're twenty five and all so I'm not supposed to call you that, but I'm practically your dad and dads are supposed to embarrass their kids. (I probably cashed in my full quota of humilation for your entire life when I mooned the camera that one time and Kiros made a wallpaper out of it that all your friends saw, huh? I still, to this day, promise I didn't know Ward had drawn that thing on my butt cheek.)_

_I'll put Kiros onto looking into this mess. We'll get it all sorted out; don't worry about it. Don't worry about your little ol' Uncle Laguna either; I'm surrounded by specially-trained bodyguards all dedicated to saving my butt the second someone gives me a mean look. _

_You tell that little craphead Dincht I said if he doesn't keep you safe and buy you anything you want, I'll pull his lip over his head, all right?_

_Love you,_

_Uncle L_

"Sir?"

Laguna pulled his hand up from his chin with a distracted "Hmm?"

One of his guards stood in the open doorway to his office, rifle unslung in a cross cradle carry across one arm, the other extended toward him, gloved hand flared out into an open palm. "We need to get you into lockdown. The rioters outside have breeched the first level of the Palace."

He could feel his mouth hanging open, dangling in an idiot's unhinged gape that he could not remember how to shut again.

His fingers his toes his limbs-they all went numb, a corpse necrosis that spread to his chest, chewing through his spinal column and closing around his heart.

And then that man had his hand around Laguna's arm, gently but firmly, and now he could see more of them lurking in the hallway outside, waiting to escort him to the emergency lift especially designed for instances such as this, the one he'd never had to use before. It would take him to a sublevel panic room enclosed in a metric ton of military-grade steel and bulletproof glass, where he'd ride all of this out until his security force either prevailed or died, hovering like a coward in his sanctuary while above him people lived and died and killed for him.

"Wait,Ward and Kiros-"

"No time, sir. I'm sorry; they were patrolling the first level when the breech happened. They're either already dead or they've taken refuge somewhere more tactically sound. Either way, we can't help them now."

No.

_No_.

Twenty years together-two _decades _of loyalty and laughter and friendship these men had given him, and he was supposed to just _leave _them? He was supposed to just walk away from it all, leave them to the fate that had already murdered bright, beautiful Selphie Tilmitt, let go of Kiros' razor wit and Ward's silent encouragement, the strands of solidarity that had bound them all together since his first days as a scared-shitless new recruit-

He was no longer a soldier. He was just a politician now, just another shark circling the government pool, spinning half-truths and election campaigns and faulty promises like they didn't leave a bad taste in his mouth, just another beast of prey wearing a suit and his best toothpaste commercial smile.

But once upon a time, once upon a long, long time ago, Laguna Loire was a warrior. He'd been a soldier with a poet's soft soul, but he still knew where to hit and stomp and incise, and even now, years later, he still remembered everything the Galbadian army had taught him.

The human body was a map of susceptible kill zone.

Platoon number five had made him a weapon; weapons lost their polish, the new shine edge of reflective mirror surface that refracted back every blow and kill and flap of open throat skin-

But a weapon drank memory like blood, holding it down under the surface, and it never forgot, even when it wanted to.

He could still recall the exact angle needed to scrape past the ribs and into the heart, and he could still recollect just where to pierce the leg so that superficial thigh wound became fatal bleed-out.

He let his guard escort him quietly, going like a lamb.

When they reached the door, Laguna shifted to his left foot-he'd never gained back all the weight he'd lost during his slow recovery, and he used the emaciated jut of his hip bone now to drive the man sideways, taking him by surprise as he staggered face first into the door.

Laguna slammed it into his head; for the moment of split second distraction that was all he needed, his guards froze up, not sure how to deal with this new threat from the man they were supposed to protect at all costs.

He took off at a dead sprint.

He reached the staircase before they brought him down, the linebacker tackle one of his security personnel went into smacking his jaw against the banister, and shooting stars across his eyes.

"Sorry Mr. President."

It was the last thing he heard.

* * *

><p>Balamb Garden<p>

Balamb

When Quistis walked into the library Tuesday afternoon, she found Seifer and Zell fighting like an old married couple over a game of cards, and Ellone sitting off to one side with a distant look on her face.

The young woman smiled when she spotted her, and started to lift a hand.

Quistis raised a finger to her lips.

Looking confused, Ellone aborted the motion mid-way through, raising one eyebrow and pulling up the fringe of shawl that fluttered off one shoulder and down over her forearm.

"Look, Wuss, you lost the fucking round; now give me my damn card."

"I'm pretty sure this round goes to _me_, Alm_ass_y, but nice try."

"Look, you idiot; that's a level ten card, against a fuckin' three. I know your capacity to understand math is as small as your tiny little Wuss brain, but even you can figure that one out."

"Screw you, asshole!"

Quistis tip-toed past them.

She seated herself in a far corner, selecting a magazine at random off the cart next to her, and flipping it open over her face.

Oh Hyne-

She was staring at an arch of naked breast. Who read this junk anyway? And was it really necessary to make up a profile that was no doubt entirely fictional when there was no possible way the publication's customers cared what 'Jessica Jiggles' preferred or did not prefer in a man?

Most of them probably hadn't even noticed there was a corresponding article to go along with all the nudity.

Ellone left them to their game and crossed the room without so much as an eye blink from either man, settling herself across from Quistis with another twitch of brow line that indicated slightly amused confusion. "Um, Quistis…maybe I don't want to know, but why are you reading that?"

She set it back down on the cart, sighing. "I just needed something to cover my face."

Ellone blinked, looking really perplexed now. "Why would you want to hide your face? What's going on?"

Quistis smoothed a strand of hair from her eye, letting it slide down in a helix of gold that snared her knuckle. "To be completely honest, I'm not sure." She looked down at her right hand, scabbed over with the pink crust layer of new injury that would become a crease of scar tissue pucker. Ellone's hands, by stark contrast, were pretty and feminine; the unmarked knuckles and fingers of an office worker, tipped in an oyster shell sheen of French manicure.

The nail polish Quistis applied chipped off long before anyone could even notice it.

"Seifer's avoiding me."

"Did you two have a fight?"

"Not exactly."

She didn't know _what _they had-that was the problem. She had suspected-dreaded-for a long time that she knew exactly who '3877SA' was; it had just been easier to pretend ignorance, to let herself slip under stratums of pretend naiveté until her suspicion was just a subtle prick at the back of her mind that she could easily dismiss. This man on the other side of safety net gray area that was the vast network of the internet-this funny, wittily honest man who made her smile-

He could be anyone.

That was the beauty of e-mail; you could sketch in all the background details of a correspondent without the burden of reality getting in the way-poet's soul and soft brown eyes, an arc of palm across sensual kissing lips-

A man who did not used to be an enemy.

A man with hair that wasn't blonde and eyes that weren't green, a man who had not spent the better part of his formative years trying to drive her to drink. A man she could respect and like and maybe even, one day, love.

A man who wasn't Seifer Almasy.

There were two halves to the complex darkness that was Seifer Almasy, mismatched jigsaw pieces that she kept trying to force together when they just didn't quite fit.

The first partial sliver piece that made up the whole of Garden's traitor and her old student-that was the Seifer she recognized. The Seifer who bullied without remorse, and killed without regret. The Seifer who had wanted the world to look at him so badly, he'd been willing to break it like the toy he wasn't allowed to play with.

If he couldn't have it, after all, no one could.

That was the Seifer who starred in her nightmares, the glint of blonde-haired lapdog shackled to her mother's side, twisted storybook knight wearing death like fever glow in his eyes.

This was the Seifer she had seen glimpses of during his years at Garden, bad Seifer with the homicide eyes, the one who splintered training partner bone and flattened nose and snapped teeth just because he _could_, just because he could plant knuckles and fire elbows and back kick knee ligaments faster than anyone else. Because the nuclear kiln that banked the fire of his anger _told _him to, and because there was a part of him that she suspected liked watching trickles of cherry gore paint the pale humps of his knuckles.

And yet-

There was that other Seifer. The Seifer with the soldier's hands tender as a lover's. The Seifer who sent her poems and told her jokes, bought her ice cream and made her smile.

The Seifer who fell asleep on a cold beach beside her, shivering because he'd given her his jacket.

How could she explain all of that to Ellone, when she didn't even understand it herself? Quistis shook her head, and clenched the hand she could not seem to look away from. "It's…a long story. And strange."

Ellone smiled gently. "I've got all day, Quistis, if you need to talk."

She rubbed her eyes like she could smear the exhaustion right out of them.

She hissed out a sigh like slow leak tire deflation.

And then she told Ellone everything, in a voice so low the older woman had to lean across the table to catch it, her chin in her hand and her heart in her throat, one eye on that bright blonde head bent over his own table, his arm stretched out along the length of the chair at his back.

"Well, how do you feel about him?" Ellone asked after a moment of brow-scrunched thought when Quistis had finished, folding her hands together between them.

"I can barely stand him, of course."

"Even after everything that's happened?" She unpeeled a finger to tap it against her lips. "Quistis, do you think…maybe you're just so convinced that you know exactly who he is that you're not willing to see anything that doesn't fit your view of him? Maybe you don't know him as well as you think you do."

Quistis frowned down at her hand. "I don't know anymore."

"Maybe…you should try out being his friend instead of his enemy. It might not be as bad as you originally thought."

"Seifer doesn't want a friend."

Ellone turned in her seat, propping one side of her cheek against her palm as she studied him. "Maybe not. But I'm pretty sure he could use one." She had that finger to her lip again. "Maybe he wanted you to know who he was. Subconciously, or something."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he went to so much trouble to remain anonymous, and then he let something that he knew would absolutely give him away slip?"

"He was…upset, I think. I mean, it's hard to convey tone through an instant message conversation, but that was the impression I was under."

On the other side of the library, Zell slammed his hand down on the table. "Ok, now I _know _you're cheatin,' Almasy."

"No, you're still just stupid."

The librarian kindly asked them to settle down, hobbling over to stick her face right up next to Seifer, one finger going like an arthritic gnarl of old tree branch bobbing in the wind, the sour lemon purse of her lips going even tighter.

Zell had once compared the poor woman's face to a constipated asshole, and Quistis couldn't quite get that image out of her head now as she watched. The dressing-down was relatively tame by the shrew's standards, really; not long after the Second Sorceress War, an argument between Zell and Irvine had somehow culminated in Zell taking his pants off to prove a point, followed moments later by the librarian dragging him out of the room by one ear, and his loud protests regarding the kind of treatment Garden rewarded its heroes with.

Come to think of it, there were a lot of 'pantsless in Garden'moments for Zell.

Which, if memory served her correctly, was actually the title of a rather disturbing adult film Irvine had stumbled across featuring poorly-acted (and historically inaccurate,) renditions of the events of the Second Sorceress War. She remembered he had been pissed, because the actor portraying him had possessed very little screen presence, and none of the 'je ne sais quoi' with which her friend did everything. He had, however, found it immensely entertaining that 'Seifer Allmyseed' and Squall 'Laymehard' battled out their differences with gun blades shaped like penises, and afterward made it up to one another with shirtless caresses and an extended makeout scene that ended…well, _happily _for all.

She had not been able to get that image out of her head for a long, long time.

The woman walked off, and Seifer and Zell immediately began fighting again.

"Of course he's upset, Quistis. Seifer never took rejection very well even as a kid."

"I didn't-" She closed her mouth, aware suddenly that it was hanging open. "I didn't _reject _him. There was nothing to reject."

"Quisty." The older woman crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes playfully. "A man doesn't go scrounging through old poetry books he hates just to make a woman happy if he doesn't have feelings for her."

"I just…" She shook her head. "I don't think that's possible."

Ellone's guards, one positioned on either side of the library entrance, passed a look back and forth between them; she saw a hand slide up to touch the angle between jaw and ear lobe, and then the man on the left suddenly slipped unobtrusively out the door.

Ellone was frowning, wrinkling up her pretty face. "Something's going on. I'll see you later, ok, Quisty? Talk to Seifer, ok?" She stood up and hurried off; her rushed exit finally brought Zell's head up, and he whipped around in his seat to find Quistis staring at him. Or, rather, his table and its other occupant; she pulled her eyes quickly away.

"Yo, Quisty!"

She watched Seifer's shoulders stiffen up like Zell's voice was a knife he had just been stabbed with. "You wanna' come play?"

His Triple Triad opponent stood up rapidly, knocking his chair over. "Where _you _goin,' Almasy?"

"I just realized I have better things to do than sit around staring at your ugly face."

"Pfft-listen to this guy, Quisty. He spends friggin' two hours sittin' here staring lovingly into my eyes, right? And now he wants to pretend it didn't mean anything to him."

Seifer righted his chair, glaring at Quistis, and then without another word, he stormed out the door, coat flaring out behind him.

"Whoa. What's going on with you two?"

"Nothing." She sighed.

* * *

><p>Some days, she let him have his soul back. Just a temporary loan, library book impermanence, long enough to convince him that perhaps today was the day he would get it back forever.<p>

He never did. It still lay in broken chips of shattered innocence-if Seifer Almasy could indeed ever have been considered innocent-reflecting back all the horrors of his sins; snapped neck joint and fish fillet of open, spurting ribcage, vacant marble eyes and the soft arch of her breasts beneath his hands. It all twisted together inside of him, blurring, fusing, dripping and smearing, ruined artist's masterpiece of abstract design that re-formed into an image that became a direct window to hell.

He could see it in the water several feet beneath his boots, her eyes and mother's voice of soothing influence, and teeth that chewed him all to shit.

By the time she was done with him, there was nothing left for anyone else.

Certainly not Quistis Trepe.

He looked down at the smooth-sanded pebble in his hands, its angles gnawed away by the ocean, and then he threw it in a long arc out over the water.

It sent spirals of expanding ripple out over the sheet of motionless glass that was the sea.

* * *

><p>Orphanage<p>

Centra

Ten Years Ago

The sun hurt his eyes.

He stared right into it anyway, like that concentric ring of yellow sphere could burn everything away; all his fears and dreams and hopes, and the isolation that beat like a second pulse in his chest.

He wanted it to take everything.

He wanted everything _out_, because his heart was not numb yet and his brain could still think, and it kept showing him his mother, smiling softly as she smoothed wisps of blonde from his eyes.

_"How come no one adopted _me_?"_

_"They tried to, Seifer, but I wouldn't let them, because you're my favorite and I'd miss you too much if you went to live with another family." She kissed the tip of his nose and then tweaked it, still smiling._

She was _lying_.

No one wanted him. That was the truth she had concealed in her eyes, the flicker of pity he wanted to smash, to destroy like the sandcastles he kicked over with his bare feet, and ran through with his sword.

Quistis was leaving today.

He glared toward the driveway, toward the gravel crunch of arriving car, and when he heard the bang of front door screen slam that echoed out a long way over the beach, he let his eyes screw themselves into smaller slits, hoping she could see him from here. She probably wouldn't even look-she probably wouldn't even _care_-

But there was a streak of gold heading toward him now, and he crossed both arms, feeling his elbow nudge up against the flimsy cardboard of the sword he'd had to cobble together from an old box he found in Matron and Cid's room after that stupid little sissy crybaby Zell broke the branch one over his knee. The little twerp had run back into the safety of the house, into the sanctuary of Matron's arms before he could do anything about it, and he was still angry about that, even now; he hoped Zell's new family ate his fat, stupid face for dinner.

"My new family's here."

She didn't _need _a new family; she had a perfectly good one here, and if it would make her stay, if it would keep her from that new-gleaming car that shone like the ocean, he'd be better, he'd be _good_-

He'd play stupid house with her and stop decapitating her dolls; he'd build her sandcastles instead of break them, and he'd even quit hiding the spiders and small garden snakes he found in Matron's garden inside her bed. He could do all that-Seifer knew he could.

She just couldn't leave him.

But he didn't say any of that. It all burned-it _seared_-like another sun in his chest, a supernova flare that swallowed his heart, but he couldn't tell bossy, know-it-all Quisty any of that. She'd use it to hurt him, break him, just the way he'd tried to fracture her all these years, and he couldn't let her win like that.

He was Seifer Almasy. He didn't hurt or break or pine, and he'd _make _himself not care that she was leaving him all alone if he had to.

"I don't care. I don't like you anyway."

Her face screwed up like she was thinking about crying-or hitting him-and at her sides, both hands became fists. "You're a _jerk_."

"Only 'cause you're ugly, and I don't like ugly people."

"You're just mad 'cause no one wants stupid little Seifer. I heard Matron tried to give you away and no one would take you."

"Shut _up_!" he snapped, and before he could even understand what he was doing, what was happening, his arms had uncoiled from the criss cross of physical barrier he put between them, and flipped out to hit her squarely across the chest in a shove that sent her staggering back across the sand.

When she landed, her glasses went flying.

He stared at them for a long time, breathing hard, his eyes going blurry, his throat becoming a closed-off pinhole he could barely force the rapid-wheeze of his inhalations down, and when she stood up, when she took that shaky step of forward advancement that put her at eye level with him, Seifer's heart stopped beating.

"I'm sorry." Quistis said sulkily, not looking at him. "Matron says you're sad 'cause you're all alone now so I should be nice to you."

He didn't _need her pity_; Seifer reached out to push her again, his throat and his heart and his eyes burning burning burning, hot like that sun at his back because he didn't _want _her stupid _sympathy_-

Quistis grabbed one of his arms as it shot out, and Indian burned it hard enough to make him cringe back, his hand clamping down automatically over the patch of pink like scald mark that striped his forearm now.

"I'm not _sad_!" he snapped, that heat back in his eyes now, an overspill of that sun in his chest, and now he had to look away from her as he wiped his wrist across his nose, because he was as bad as that crybaby Zell, bawling on the front porch because he'd dropped his ice cream. "You're all stupid and I'm glad you're not going to be here anymore!"

Her arms came gently up around his back, and then she was holding him, then she was _hugging _him, and something inside him went warm and liquid and airborne, a slow-dissolve ripple in his gut he didn't understand. Something inside him showed him where to put his arms and hands and face, and even though she was probably getting her cooties all over him, for a moment, a second, a flash of an instant-

Seifer didn't care.

This wasn't what Matron talked about when she teased him about not always thinking girls were gross, was it? Because they still were. Maybe Quisty was pretty; maybe she reminded him of those princesses he was going to rescue one day, and maybe her hands felt warm, and nice where they snugged into the small of his back, but she was still a _girl_.

"Bye Seifer. Be nice to Matron."

And then she was gone, her glasses in one hand, her little legs pistoning up the incline of loose sand that took her back to that long-winding drive of multi-colored shale, her hair fluttering like a sheet behind her.

He stared after her for a long time.

* * *

><p>Harbor<p>

Balamb

Present Day

He watched another rock splash, watched a ring of saltwater like glass beads hang suspended for just a moment, and then crash back down into the ocean underneath it.

He flipped the next one like a coin, watched it smack back down into his palm, the flesh there stinging at the impact, and then he whipped his arm back and fired it as hard as he could, right at the sun.

What a stupid little shit he'd been.

What a stupid fucking _man _he was.

He closed his eyes, let the sun touch his face, let it burn away the frisson of maggot squirm in his gut that was his shame and disappointment and shivering, unending fear. These were the only things that comprised him now, cringing coward horror and the raw wound that was the look he could picture on her face the moment she realized her Prince Charming was just a damaged asshole of a man who would never be good enough for her.

What the fuck had he thought he was doing in the first place? He'd always known she'd eventually have to find out. He'd always known the day would come when Quistis would suddenly realize who was on the other end of that computer, when she would pause mid-keystroke and finally, finally understand everything-

And just what the fuck was he going to do then? He'd never thought that far ahead. He'd just lost himself in the moment, in the only medium he could use to communicate with her where he was just another human being to her, and not a shitty ex-knight with just a ratty trench coat and a gun blade to his traitor's name, the one that left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

He just wanted to be a fucking man, all right? Some days, he just wanted to set down the tattered, worm-eaten mantle that was Seifer Almasy the traitor, Seifer Almasy the bitch boy with his mother's cunt around his dick and her hand around his throat, and he just wanted to be a goddamned person like anyone else. He just wanted people to quit staring, stop pointing, and that was something he never would have seen coming. That was something boy Seifer never would have predicted, his fame dreams and recognition lust still tight as a noose on his brain and his heart, because he didn't realize, he could never even guess-

Sometimes notoriety was worse than anonymity. Sometimes blending in, fading out-that was the best fucking ending to the story. Because sometimes when you went out with a bang, it was the wrong kind of explosion, and some cruel twist of fate, some sick alteration of the fairytale let you survive it, and sometimes-

Sometimes survival was its own sort of ninth circle hell.

He itched at his forehead, raking his fingers down over the knurl of scar there like he could peel it right off.

Sometimes, he wanted to peel his whole fucking body off, walk around in someone else's skin for the day. Maybe he could borrow something Quistis would look twice at, something she'd smile for, the kind of lip coil Leonhart always got to be on the receiving end of-

The phone tucked into an inner coat pocket rang suddenly; he jumped and nearly fell into the fucking ocean, his heart choking off his airway. He'd practically forgotten he even had the damn thing; it wasn't like anyone called him.

Seifer fumbled it out of his pocket, squinting down at the unfamiliar number. "Who the fuck is this?"

"Seifer?"

He knew that voice. It spread warmth hotter than the fucking sun through his whole body; this was not the desperate puppy affection of his unrequited love for her, and it was not the acid prickle of the electric hum that was his mother along every single goddamned sense he possessed-it was just camaraderie like warm bathwater, welcome and soothing and unknotting all his muscles.

He grinned like a fucking jackass into the phone. "Raijin?"

"Wasn't sure you'd have the same number, ya' know? Hey, man, it's good to hear your voice, ya' know? Me an' Fu-we been missin' ya.'"

"How's that ornery bitch doing?"

"Shh! You're gonna' get me in trouble, ya' know? Ears like a fucking dog, ya' know."

"Why don't you put her on the phone? I'd like to say hi, let her know her fiance's going around comparing her to a dog."

"It's not fiance anymore; got married a couple of days ago, ya' know. Small ceremony; me an Fu…we were both thinkin' you shoulda' been there."

"Congratulations." he said, meaning it. Those two had put up with enough of his shit over the years that they deserved all the genuine happiness this fucked-up universe could throw at them. "I made SeeD." he blurted out, bringing one hand up to scratch awkwardly at his neck. He didn't know why the fuck he'd said that; it was nothing compared to the accomplishment of marrying Fujin Dolgren-he'd been through that test so many times now he was bound to pass sooner or later, if for no other reason than all the instructors were sick of seeing his face at them. What did he expect Raijin to do? Feed him some fucking cake? Give him a handjob?

"Yeah? That's great, ya' know?" He paused for several long moments, and Seifer listened to the subtle hiss of the bad connection between them. "Seifer, Fu and me decided to settle down where no one knew us, where we could start over after the war, ya' know? We don't get a whole lot of news out here-lot a' isolation-it's what we wanted, ya' know, but Fu an' me-we've been hearing some bad stuff lately. We got worried about you, ya' know? Fu'd kill me for tellin' you, but she's been havin' a lot of nightmares lately, 'bout the war and stuff, 'bout you."

He felt his throat go tight and hot again. "I'm doing all right."

Actually, he wasn't doing so fucking hot at all, but he didn't need to ruin Raijin's whole day with details of his shitty little life.

"You got anything comin' up? Any SeeD missions or anything, ya' know?"

"No." Just an empty bed and a crowded ceiling, and his mother's eyes staring down at him through the darkness.

"Fu an' me…we were thinkin,' maybe you could come visit for a while. We'd like to see ya,' ya' know."

He looked up into the sun, eating a hole into the sky, chewing away the fringe of storm cloud that peeled apart in wisps of gunmetal smoke. Why the fuck not? What did he have here at Garden that was so goddamned important, anyway? Some stomped-all-to-shit pride and a wounded heart? Malcolm's accomplices were all gone, and anyone else at Garden who disagreed with Squall harboring a sorceress wouldn't scrape up the balls to try anything for a long time.

It wasn't like anyone would miss him.

It wasn't like _Quistis _would miss him, and that was what he was really hoping for, wasn't it?

"Yeah. All right. Sounds good." he said.

* * *

><p>"At approximately 1:30 this afternoon, anti-sorceress protesters attacked the Presidential Palace; the riot that broke out caused several thousand gil worth of damage as well as several casualties. Right now, we are showing a tentative body count of ten men and women. We don't yet know if these are protesters or part of President Loire's security force; our sources indicate that the situation has been contained and that President Loire is safe, but that much of his security force, including longtime friends of the president, Ward Zabac and Kiros Seagill, are still unaccounted for. Tom?"<p>

An arch of skylight, belching smoke.

Smashed window pane, holding onto serrated leftovers like teeth.

A smear of red down ziggurat of step-built front entrance, ending in a lower half of blown-apart man, his head tangled up in the fray of intestines poking out in a network of creeper vines from his waist.

These were all the things she saw in the slow-pan camerawork that took her across the whole grisly scene in a flat three seconds.

Ellone turned away with a fist to her throat, and Zell, standing next to her, put his arm around her waist.

"Thanks, Jenci. As you can see, everything is still very chaotic here; no one is sure exactly what happened or who was behind it, but speculation is rampant that this is no longer just a few unhappy citizens getting together to have their voices heard. This was well-organized, and involved weaponry that normal citizens just don't have access to. We could very well be looking at some sort of anti-sorceress terrorist faction here in Esthar-"

The footage shrank to a pinpoint of black, and then winked out completely.

Squall's face had gone tight, his hand white-knuckled around the remote he still clutched.

Ellone felt emptiness like the aftermath of a star's death inside her.

Leaning up against the door to Squall's office, hunched over on himself like the weight of Selphie's death had physically bowed him, Irvine's cheeks stood out in bloodless stripes beneath his hat. He pulled the brim of it down lower, letting it ride just above his eyebrows, his lips going thin and tight.

Out of the corner of one eye, she watched Rinoa huddle into Squall's arms.

They had all instinctively turned to one another for comfort, all except Irvine with that arc of hat brim hiding his eyes, and Quistis standing silently in the center of the room, a sheet of blind-filtered sunlight spotlighting her in gold that blended seamlessly into her hair. She had on that calm face of I-will-fix-this certainty, the absolute conviction she had worn even as child Quistis, trying to repair everything broken, heal anything hurt. It was a mask, illusionary camouflage, but she pieced it together as perfectly as she did everything else, everything coming together jigsaw precise until Ellone could not even see the real emotion lurking behind that steadfast gaze.

She had always done this, even as a child, not allowing herself to feel, not taking even a moment to separate out her own emotions if other people needed her. It was exactly what she had done at Selphie's funeral, ready with a kind smile here, a gentle comfort touch there, but never accepting anything reciprocative. Never acknowledging, never even pausing to wonder if beneath that wise teacher's gaze and flick of tender soldier's fingers, brushing Rinoa's hair from the red-rimmed slits of her eyes, she hurt just as badly, pulsed with the same heartbeat throb of pain that Ellone could see reflected in all of their faces.

Quistis had never put herself first. She had her friends and her students and anyone who had ever looked up to her, anyone who had set her on that idol pedestal she never seemed able to step down from; there was always someone to push her back up, coax her away from that quiet corner of normalcy she wanted to burrow into, a place where she could be just a woman and not an icon. In that corner she was only Quistis Trepe and not Instructor Trepe with all the answers, Rank A SeeD Trepe with the spotless mission record and the imposing body count of a top notch warrior.

In that corner was a woman with a pretty smile and a book-buried swoop of pert little nose, holding up the arch of bridge piece that might have belonged to a librarian's glasses in another life.

Ellone let her fingers tangle in Zell's. He cupped the palm of his other hand over her knuckles, letting it rest there in a friction slide of callus and heat and the slow-smolder affection that trickled all the way into the pit of her stomach and pooled there.

He was smiling at her, his cheek tattoo corner-crinkling, spreading a web of crow's feet to his left eye. "They'll be ok, Sis; don't cry."

She hadn't realized she was, but now she lifted a hand, swiped a finger, and it came back saltwater moist, and it was only now that she recognized the corresponding burn in her sinuses. She tried to return his smile, but she could tell from the look on his face that she hadn't done a very good job.

He kissed her forehead.

For a moment, it felt like just the two of them standing there, and her world condensed to the coil of arm he kept around her waist, and the pleasant afterglow warmth his lips left behind.

* * *

><p><em>Their field is a graveyard of skeletal dandelion puff.<em>

_It twirls around him like flutters of dove wing, spiraling up into sky the color of Time Compression, and all around him, there is movement, there is _life_, but none of it belongs to her, and he turns and spins and spirals like those cotton puffs of dead flower, her name on his lips, their promise in his heart-_

_Across from him, framed in twists of thorn patch that shred his clothes and gouge his eyes, Seifer dangles from their mother's puppet strings. Straining lines of silver wire that twitch and shiver like exposed vein, pounded through his arms and legs and head, and now that vacant socket dome of skull rotates around toward him-_

_His eyes are gone-they are strands of quivering gelatin across torn shirt front and ripped knuckle ridge, but he is _looking right at him_, he is _seeing _all the way down into flinching coward's heart, and now that hinge of jaw drops open, flaps loose-_

_"Fithos lusec wecos vinosec-" His mouth clatters shut with the clack of wooden doll's teeth, and quivers open again. "Fithos lusec wecos vinosec-"_

_His laughter is a dry cough. _

_The cadavers of rot-eaten roses begin to join wisps of dandelion in the sky above him, a hurricane eye of corroded black and white. It whips and thrashes and swallows him in a cyclone corkscrew that blots out his whole world and in the background his teeth are still clacking, and his corpse's rasp of hack slides in through his ears like a knife, and now everything is clearing, everything is burning up like space re-entry-_

_His father is dancing with his mother._

_They move through the field in a waltz that lights his father's face, and his idiot's feet, his bumbling klutz's stride is gone, and he quick-steps and pirouettes like an expert._

_He is holding Squall's mothers with a tenderness that wraps a press of fist crush around his heart, and squeezes tight. _

_"Fithos lusec wecos vinosec-" _

_His mother is dead. _

_He never even knew her, and she is dead, she is _gone_, but Squall's father clasps the rodent infestation of her porous arms, chewed by decay and teeth and burrow holes of insect wriggle that turn Squall's stomach like he doesn't even _realize_-_

_"Look, Raine, there's our son, isn't he beautiful-"_

_Her smile is a squirm of earthworm. _

_"So beautiful-" she hisses through the shreds of grave dirt and insect writhe that are her lips, and his father keeps smiling, keeps dancing-_

Rinoa, _please_!

_Seifer's limbs jerk and tremble and contort, and his puppet's strings sing and twitch and send a feedback of ripple up through his arms and legs and head, and now he is dancing with them-_

_"Fithos lusec wecos vinose-"_

_It is Joss Malcolm holding his strings, his face a shattered bleeding ruin and he hisses "I want my eyes back, you bastard-" and then he gives a yank like a fisherman netting his catch, and he reels and reels and reels, and Seifer is screaming-_

_It is Matron holding his strings, and she reels and reels and reels, and her smile does not change, but it does not belong to the dark-haired woman he remembers from a seaside home-_

Rinoa, _I need you!_

_She mounts him like a whore and Seifer is still screaming, he is thrusting, he is bleeding and weeping and orgasming, and Squall's father spins past like he doesn't see, like he doesn't care-_

Squall jerked upright with a gasp of winded runner wheeze, banging his knee on his desk.

On the couch across from him, Rinoa napped fitfully, her hair wound like a noose around the pale arch of her throat, both hands tented across the belly that had yet to swell with his child.

He leaned forward with his head in both hands, waiting out his pulse, holding absolutely still until he felt his heart begin to climb back down from his throat, tears like junkie track line burning on his cheeks.

His nightmare fused together inside of him, becoming montage like stained glass window, that square of red-blood window pane a smear of unhinged puppet's mouth and pistoning mother's hips, punching forward like she wanted to break him, this rectangle of seafoam green his father's dead wife, smiling at him like a flap of throat-slit-

He staggered toward her, knocking a pencil holder off his desk. The crash woke her up, and she sat up blinking, her eyes narrowed into unworking slits. "Squall?"

He got his face in her hair and his arms around her small frail body, and then he just sat there, holding her, crowding her, panting or sobbing, he wasn't sure which. She stroked his hair and murmured his name, and slowly, slowly he began to unwind, to unravel under her touch, until he had his head in her lap and one hand across his eyes, his breath a random hiccup now.

"What's wrong?" she whispered.

He shook his head.

"Ok." Her voice brightened artificially. "Want to hear a joke Zell told me today? Eleven people were hanging onto a rope under a helicopter, right? And there were ten men and one woman, and they realized the rope wasn't strong enough to hold all of them, so one of them had to let go or they'd all die. They couldn't choose until the woman gave this really touching speech; she said she'd let go of the rope 'cause since she was a woman she was always used to sacrificing everything for her husband and kids and men in general and she was used to not getting anything in return. After she finished her speech, all ten men let go of the rope and started clapping for her!" She poked him in the side. "Hmm. Not very funny, huh?"

He shook his head again, with the faintest of smiles this time.

"Ok, mister, what about this one? I can tell it 'cause Quisty's not here right now. So this dumb blonde was really tired of being made fun of, so she dyed her hair brown so everyone would think she was a brunette. When she had brown hair, she decided to go for a drive in the country. She was driving for a while and saw this farmer with a flock of sheep, and they were so cute that she stopped her car and went over to the famer and said 'If I can guess how many sheep you have, can I take one home?' The farmer liked to gamble so he agreed, and the blonde looked at his flock and guessed 157. He was amazed 'cause she was right, so she picked one out and got back into her car. The farmer went up to her before she could drive away and said 'If I can guess the real color of your hair, will you give me my dog back?'"

"Rinoa." He sighed. "Please stop trying to be funny."

She scrunched her face up into an exaggerated pout, crossing her arms. "What's _that _supposed to mean?"

He smiled, just slightly. "That you're not." Squall lifted a hand to the curve of her cheekbone above him. She turned into his caress, and kissed his palm.

"You're a big fat meanie, Squall Leonhart." Her face crumpled suddenly, and he knew she was remembering that Selphie would never call him that again. Sometimes, with the five of them scattered across Garden, it was easy to forget; she wasn't _gone_-she was simply away for the moment, strolling the harbor front with Irvine, stage directing a muttering Zell-

But she wasn't. And she never would again.

He reached up to pull her face down into a kiss, letting her lips burn away puppet Seifer and the infinite vacuum of Selphie's final stare, letting the moment that passed in a twitch of eyeblink between them reach all the way down inside him like cleansing fire, razing anything that was not her mouth or hands or warmth. When it ended, she kept her forehead pressed to his, and he buried his fingers in the sheet of silk that was her hair.

* * *

><p>This is what he feels the first time her smile unclenches his chest, and opens his heart.<p>

His fading control is an erosion of wave-eaten cliff face.

His stomach is a shrink-wrap of new emotion around his spine. It is like he has stumbled in the dark for years, and she is his first glimpse of high-noon sunlight, blazing like a supernova in the sky above him.

And years later, he still feels the same. He does not pretend to understand her sometimes-hand-stifled gossip chatter and a collection of purses that rivals Garden's armory-these are things he doesn't get, and never tries to, and he knows his silences, and the emotions he keeps locked up inside of himself where they cannot be poked or prodded or used against him don't make any sense to her-

But he loves her anyway. He loves her like he can never remember loving anything, not Matron or even his friends, and it is terrifying. It keeps him awake at night, staring wide-eyed at patterns of shadow that stitch themselves across the ceiling, listening to the jackhammer staccato of his pulse.

Sometimes he can barely even breathe for fear of losing her.

They are polar opposites in some ways. Many ways. She wants to help the world, and he-

He just wants it to leave him alone. To leave _them _alone, content in their little universe where only a select few other people exist, and only then when he wants them to. Their love is his retreat, curtain-drawn private booth, empty meadowland created solely for them, because one day-

One day, their world will come crashing in on him like towering tsunami crest, sweeping him out to sea. He knows it is coming, because fairytales do not last forever-it's why the stories always end, because happily-ever-after can only extend for so long, can only keep going so far, and he knows eventually it will snap, and rebound on him like broken rubber band.

But for now-

For now he will take whatever he can get from this sanctuary she offers him, this haven that is her soft arms, keeping everything at bay for just a little while.

* * *

><p>"Squall? Are you scared for Laguna?"<p>

He sighed. "He's fine."

"Right now, but-"

He sat up and flipped himself over, resting his chin on her stomach. "I don't want to talk about him." he mumbled into the folds of her shirt.

"You never do."

"Then don't bring him up." he snapped, more harshly than he'd intended. He felt her stiffen, her hands pulling away, that warmth drawing back, and he knew she was pouting again. "Sorry…I just…don't want to talk about him." He edged her shirt up over the pale span of her still-flat belly, and kissed it gently. "Do you think we'll have a girl or a boy?" he asked softly, trailing his fingers across her flesh and the growing life slumbering inside of her, an undercurrent hum of subtle movement he almost thought he could feel. If he pressed his cheek close enough, burrowed his senses deep enough, would he feel the faint after echo of nudge that was its first kick?

Did his son or his daughter-could they sense him through the subcutaneous layers of her? Could they feel his love for their mother, the love that could not help but expand to encompass something that was part her?

He kissed her stomach again, and when he looked up through the flutter of his overgrown bangs, he could see her pout replaced with a soft arch of smile that reached all the way down inside him, and uprooted everything.

Squall braced himself on his palms, moving up to her mouth again, just holding that moment of flesh to flesh contact between them, not deepening it or trying to take it farther, just reveling, floating in the heady graze of her lips and hands, coming up to clasp his neck.

When he pulled back this time, she had tears in her eyes. Very gently, he brushed them away.

"What are we going to do?" she whispered. "It's my fault Selphie's dead. I can't stay here, Squall."

He knew, and knowing was a knife in his gut, twisting. But for right now, right now with her arms around him and their child pressed between them, right now when he had no answer anyway, he wanted to just stay like this. He wanted the world to become just them again, because in this bubble of rose glass duping him, for just a moment, into believing there was no death or pain or suspended hammer blow of consequence waiting to smash them, Squall felt safe and warm and _loved_.

A long time ago, Matron with her home by the sea and her gentle mother's smile had tried to give him the same feeling. He had held it at arm's length then, putting it off like it offended him. It was pity love, because his parents had left him all alone in the world, and he hadn't wanted it.

But this was something entirely different, and it had become his air. It was a fundamental truth of human nature that it needed love, even after a man spent seventeen years convincing himself he could function without it.

And now-

Now he knew he could not survive without it, and yet one day-

One day he would need to figure out how. One day, this woman with her eyes closed under the graze of palm he brushed gently across her cheek would leave him, and he did not know what that would do to him.

* * *

><p>The most fundamental truth of human nature is that it needs love.<p>

For a long time, Seifer Almasy convinced himself he could bypass this; love did not lift a sword or gut a dragon or rescue a princess, and it did not offer him the fame he had always known was waiting for him.

And yet, even the mighty topple.

He had toppled a long, long way.

He'd pitched face-first into the mud and shit of life, and gotten back up with it all still clinging to him, and it wasn't until then that he realized this truth, and how very fucking much it applied to him. How it cut him off at the knees, and left him hobbling on the stumps that were all she had left him. A cripple dragging his shame and guilt and baseless fury that he had no where to put behind him like prisoner chains, snagging those piles of excrement one by one by one until they weighed him down, pulled him back, until he was just another fucking piece of trash on the side of the road, ground down into that shit mire he had not been able to escape after all.

His chains were so fucking heavy, because he'd never even tried to let anyone else help lug them. That was how love worked after all, wasn't it? You set down your baggage because your arms had started to ache, because they couldn't go another fucking minute hauling all that around, and someone else picked it all up for you. Someone else shouldered that burden and started back off up the road, and then when the time came, you did the same for them.

Except his fucking baggage was a whole goddamned cargo train, and no one deserved that. No one deserved that except the stupid boy who'd put it there, and the man who was too angry and helpless and full of self-loathing to take it off again.

But he wished-

Fuck. He wished, someone would at least be willing to try. Maybe he'd been monumentally, unforgivably stupid when he let his mother take him, when he let that thing that lived and breathed and ate her up inside become the focal point of his world, but he'd still been part child then. Full of idiot dreams and wishes and the childhood stories she'd gorged him on-

And that fundamental truth of human nature. In the beginning, he had followed her because she was his mother, and he loved her, and, later, because she had picked away his pride and self-respect until there was nothing left but open, throbbing wound.

Maybe he would find a home with Raijin and Fujin. Maybe they'd open their arms like his mother used to and he would decide fuck Garden; fuck Cid and Matron both for grooming lonely little homeless children to be their future hire-for-profit killing machines, and fuck every drop of sweat and drip of blood he'd spent in that place, wasted currency paying for the wreck of a man it had all carved him into.

That sounded nice. That sounded real damn nice; maybe he was getting sick of all this fucking soldier shit after all.

He'd started packing that very night; it wasn't like he owned a whole lot of shit in the first place-he could probably fit his whole fucking room in the daypack he'd unzipped across the bed. His spare boots went in first, followed by a rolled-up bundle consisting of several pairs of basic shirts and pants, all Garden-issue because he was a fucking commodity off that assembly line of trained murderer and not an individual anymore. His trench coat-that one nod to individualism, war-torn and stained in old blood though it was-he folded carefully over the top of the pack after zipping it, standing there with his arms crossed over his chest trying to decide if he'd remembered everything, and then flinging it aside with a snarl of expletive to empty the whole thing out and start all over, because he realized he'd forgotten underwear. And socks. And anything resembling toiletries, and he certainly wasn't sharing a goddamned tooth brush with Raijin.

A tentative knock on his door interrupted his snarling, curse-laden attempt to get the thing to close again, and he ignored it.

Zell and Quistis were the only two he could possibly imagine stopping by his room, and he wanted to talk to them like he wanted Hyperion up his ass.

Another knock, a bit harder this time, shivered his door in its frame.

Dammit.

He was sleeping; taking a shower, masterbating-hell, he was dead. Whatever he was as far as they were concerned, he was not available to talk.

A sliver of hallway light yawned into his room.

Goddammit; he'd forgotten to lock the door again. He'd gotten in the habit of leaving it open when he used to sneak girls over after curfew, and he'd never bothered to break himself of it.

Sure enough, there was Trepe standing there in that square of backlit yellow, the illumination and her hair competing to be the brightest spot in the dark isolation of his room, her finger halfway through the act of pushing those damn glasses up her nose again.

She had her hair down again.

"Can I help you?" he asked, letting his sarcasm bleed through into his voice, an ugly undercurrent he let leak into his eyes and the half-smile twist of unpleasant sneer he aimed her way.

"What _happened _in here?"

The aftermath of the temper tantrum he'd gone into after reading his mother's letter was still evident all over his room; he'd patched the window with an old blanket that hadn't worked very well as a blanket never mind a window pane, and needless to say, nights were a real fucking joy, particularly when the wind picked up. At least the chill helped keep him awake.

He didn't much like sleeping anymore.

The crumpled ball of letter like a wrinkled-up old fist still sat in the middle of his carpet where he'd thrown it, and Seifer kicked it under his bed when she wasn't looking.

"I was doing some redecorating. The color scheme was all wrong."

Quistis lifted an eyebrow.

"It's a work in process." he said conversationally, leaning up against the wall beside his desk like nothing she did affected him, like just the sight of her didn't wrap his throat like the garrote of his mother's slave collar.

"Going somewhere?"

"No; every once in a while I just like to pack all my shit up to see if it'll fit. It's like poking yourself in the eye with a stick to pass the time, only a lot more pointless and stupid."

"All right, stupid question."

"Yeah."

Silence hung between them like pending thunderstorm.

"Where are you going?" she asked quietly, and he heard a hint of timidity in her voice that didn't belong there at all. Maybe on some level she could sense everything that was going on underneath the surface, the whole fucked-up tangle of longing and apprehension and frustration that was the broad spectrum of his feelings for her-maybe a part of her was reconsidering, wondering just how well she knew Seifer Almasy after all, this man who had risen like a star and fallen just as quickly-

Or maybe she just needed to clear her fucking throat.

"That's not really any of your damn business, is it, Instructor?"

She answered her own question. "Raijin and Fujin." He wasn't really that surprised she'd gotten it in one guess; who the hell else would possibly tolerate a visit from him?

The door shut behind her, and she took three steps into the room, not anywhere close enough to touch, but sure as hell near enough to violate the sanctity of this place, _his _territory.

Who the fuck was he kidding; this damn room was nothing more than a jailhouse of stale memories and darkness like cancer, eating him away while his mother watched and laughed.

He hated it.

"Seifer, if that's where you're going-_please_. It's very important that I know where they are."

"I _told _you to leave them the hell alone. They're done with Garden. It's over, Trepe; the war was a long time ago. They were on the right side when all was said and done, weren't they?" he snapped.

"Rinoa is pregnant." Quistis confessed softly. "She can't stay here. The world is wary enough of her; if they find out she's pregnant, that she could possibly pass on the curse to a child-"

"I get it. I just don't see what it has to do with me."

Her eyes tightened behind her glasses. He could see her pulse beating in her throat.

He wanted to break her.

That was the splinter the creature who stole his mother's face had left behind.

Under Ultimecia's control, he had been little more than a wild animal, chained junkyard dog straining at his leash. The simplistic principles of a predator ruled his heart and his mind, tweaked by the subtle nip and tuck of her manipulator's fingers. His primary function, his entire existence, was to eradicate any threats to his puppet master, his whore, his mother. He was her first line of defense; pain could not be allowed to stop him.

Anything that hurt him, he hurt worse.

There was still a part of him that wanted to follow that rule.

Trepe had scored him deep with her indifference, with the exasperated certainty he could see in her eyes that he was still the same old Seifer, still the same unwelcome interruption in the back of her classroom, never good enough to oust the shining star that was Squall Leonhart from her fantasies. He could flay her open still alive, leave her screaming underneath him the way his mother had done to him-

But he would not, would _never_, because mostly he was just the man and not the knight anymore, and the man loved just as single-mindedly as he hated. The man wanted to try and do the right thing once in a while, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.

"Squall's been looking for them. We thought it would be a safe place to keep her for a while, at least until she has the baby; he thought they might be willing to help."

"They left Garden for a reason, and you want to suck them back up into it?"

"She would just be staying with them for a little while; it's not a mission, just a favor."

He sneered at her again. "Yeah, and I'm sure Pubes won't hesitate to put a little I-am-commander-hear-me-roar pressure on this fucking _favor_."

"Seifer, _please_. This is very important."

She needed to stop saying that. She needed to stop _looking _at him like that, like someone had just answered her prayer and that answer was him, like if he did this for her, she just might look at him with something that wasn't the lip curl of her distaste for him, something that wasn't what she'd felt for Squall Leonhart, but was a damn sight better than anything she'd ever experienced for him.

"Seifer." She took a step closer, and now her hand came up, slowly, like she didn't quite understand what it was doing or how to stop it, and it came to rest on his forearm, soft as the thread of whisper that urged him to give in. "Please just let me talk to them."

He stared down at her fingers for a long time, their warmth seeping into him like fatal wound hemorrhage. It was just as unstoppable, just as lethal, and he was just as powerless against it.

Seifer Almasy, brought crashing down from the pedestal he'd put himself on by a woman's touch. Twice.

He looked away, yanking one hand violently through his hair.

All women had that intristic knowledge of just exactly how to push a man's buttons; for most, it was a flutter of doe eye, and the carefully-timed lip quiver of threatened tears, but Quistis-

All Quistis needed was a look. That earnest fucking passion she got in the classroom when she was really on a roll-it went right to his chest, all the way down his spine and into his gut, shredding the steadfast resolve in his heart.

He turned his back on her.

Shit.

Seifer held out his phone.

* * *

><p>Presidential Palace<p>

Esthar

He could hear Kiros and Ward snickering behind him as he hung up with a very relieved Ellone.

"I can't believe you were coming to save us or something." Kiros guffawed. "How long it take them to bring you down, old man, three seconds?"

"Hey! This 'old man' brought down one of the army's own special forces, so watch what you say."

"He was probably laughing too hard to stop you."

Laguna poked his friend hard in the side of the head with the palm-sized phone he jabbed like a spear point through Kiros' hair, narrowing his eyes menacingly. He shook his finger ominously. "You just watch yourself; these babies ain't lost their edge, twenty years or no twenty years." He jammed his left bicep right under Kiros' nose and flexed as hard as he could, tensing his face up in a way Ellone always insisted made him look like he needed to use the bathroom very seriously.

"Pfft. Get that outta' my face. Sit down and drink your beer, gramps."

Grumbling, Laguna did so.

Seated diagonally from him, Ward had a bandage across his head-nothing too serious; the man's head was like a boulder, after all-and Kiros had escaped the entire disaster none the worse for the wear.

Laguna wished he could say the same for himself. His damn jaw hurt.

They'd finally been upgraded from the panic room after his security team-or what was left of them, anyway-completed a final sweep of the palace to make absolutely sure everything was under control, reluctantly permitting Laguna's friends to take him back up to his spacious suites where they had turned his coffee table into an impromptu Triple Triad tournament, and the vase Ellone always insisted on arranging with fresh flowers every couple of days into an ice bucket for their alcohol. Which they would not be telling Ellone about.

He took a swig of his beer. "You believe this ungrateful jerk, Ward? I risk my life to save his ass, and what do I get? Mockery."

Kiros flicked droplets of condensation from his bottle at Laguna.

"Your move, Seagill."

"I already made it."

"You did?" He glanced down at the board. "Shit. How many is that, again?"

"Five for me, none for you. Told you ya' sucked at this. You shouldn't listen to your niece anymore; she only tells you that you don't play like a developmentally delayed five-year-old because she doesn't want to hurt your feelings."

Ward began to snicker again, a dry cough of a laugh that turned the full force of Laguna's scowl on the lumbering giant of a man. "Hey! Don't laugh at him. It makes him think he's funny."

"I am funny."

"You're an ass."

Laguna took another drink, leaning back as he set the bottle down and laced both hands behind his head. "You think Ellone's doing ok?"

"No; she's dead. You were talking to that little weirdo Dincht doing an amazing impression of a twenty-five-year-old woman. I hear the theater over on 94th's thinkin' about picking him up for their next performance."

"Ah, shut up. I'm just worried about her."

Kiros snorted. "Well, she's not here, is she? She'll be fine, Uncle Mother Hen. You know those boys'll keep her safe. I mean, I can see why you're concerned and all-they're pretty helpless, with all that training on how to kill people and stuff-but I'm sure they can handle anything that might threaten her."

Laguna brought his hands together, and flicked his wrists in a twist of knuckle pop that made his joints ache. All their combined skills hadn't been enough to save Selphie; life altered and ended in the blink of an eye, and sometimes there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it, mercenary training or no. Sometimes your number was up, the universe wanted you back, and you let it take you even if you weren't ready, even if there were people who loved and needed and wouldn't know how to go on without you.

Raine had gone like that. Too soon, before he could even begin to process the depths of his love for her, before he could even hope to make some sort of sense of the snarl of emotion that trapped his heart and squeezed his gut just because she'd smiled at him, just because she'd slipped her soft little hand into his and told him 'yes.'

And now-now he understood exactly how fragile life was. Exactly how quickly it could be ripped away, exactly how infinitely precious Ellone's smile and his son's proud-set jaw were, when tomorrow he might wake up, tomorrow he might stir from dreams of a modest home in Winhill with the woman he still loved-

And realize he did not have them anymore. He had never really had Squall in the first place, but there was still that flicker of hope in his chest, burning like an ulcer in his stomach. He was part Raine, after all, and that piece of her somewhere inside that quiet, emotionally-closed off young man whose childhood he had let slip right through his fingers without even knowing it-that little sliver of her could not hate Laguna Loire.

Not when she had loved him enough to quietly coax and shoo away the hopeless, senseless pining that had been his fascination with Julia. Not when she had smiled at him that special little way, like her world was a tunnel and he the light at the end of it.

"How many you missin' from your team?" Kiros asked quietly, flicking an Ifrit card against his knuckles with a thoughtful frown.

"Security?" Laguna sighed. "About half. They're trying to figure out how to make up their numbers. It's a pretty long process with background checks and all that."

"Why don't they bring in a private company? Government's not the only way to go."

"I think they're considering that. But they can't just go to the guys who drive the armored cars back and forth between banks, you know?"

Kiros ran the card across his bottom lip. "Why don't you contract SeeD?"

"Because B. Garden's the only one who will have anything to do with us right now, and there'd be some problems with that. Like the fact that people hate them only slightly less than they hate me. It'd all just be one big ticking bomb waiting to go off in our faces."

"You could keep them under the radar; room 'em here at the Palace. I mean, that's where they'd need to be anyway. Give them a few days off here and there, maybe let 'em go back to Garden for a couple of days. Bring them in VIP style, like some of the ambassadors-blacked-out windows, back entrance, the whole drill."

Laguna rubbed his aching jaw. "Maybe. I don't think Squall can spare too many people, though." He felt a pang in his gut like a nudge of upper cut because he did not feel right saying 'my son.'

Kiros took a drink, and stabbed a finger at him as he brought his bottle back down to the table with an echoing clink. "You need to talk to your son, Loire." He let his voice go soft, winding it around him like the noose that was suddenly burning closed Laguna's throat, and he had to look away from his friend's steady regard. "Raine wouldn't have wanted this."

"He doesn't want to talk to me." He did not recognize his own voice.

Kiros snorted again. "He's nineteen-still a teenager. None of 'em want to talk to their parents." He took another drink. "You think it's easy for him? Half the world wants his girlfriend dead. He just buried a friend. He has no relationship with the father he's convinced himself abandoned him when he was just a kid-"

"I _didn't_! I didn't even know-"

"I know." Kiros interrupted quietly. "But he doesn't get that. He grew up his whole life thinking his father didn't give a crap about him-you think that's easy to just get over? That poor kid's probably totally lost right now, Laguna. Make the first move."

He tried to swallow that knot in his throat, tried to ease it right back down into his stomach with the rest of that rat's nest of solidified anguish, the splintered mosaic of Raine's glowing face and Squall's cold-steel eyes, all blurred together somewhere inside of him. "I've tried. He's not interested."

"Keep tryin'." Kiros lifted his bottle to his lips again. "He'll come around."


	17. Chapter 15

**A/N: Last update for the next couple of weeks. I'll be out of town all next weekend without my laptop or any internet access, so unless I can figure out how to beam chapter 16 directly from my computer to this site using only the powers of my mind, I get to slack off a bit on my usual weekly update habit. I've left you guys with a little something in this chapter that will hopefully tide you over, though. ;) Also, If I CAN figure out how to beam chapters onto the site with my mind, you guys will be the first to know, because that would be pretty awesome.**

**Chapter Fifteen**

Balamb Garden

Balamb

Midnight spread like a bruise far above her head.

In that ocean of black there was no moon, just a faint wedge of distant glow like a slice of sunrise trying to claw its way back to the surface, and Quistis kept her eyes on the sky, burrowing under the triple layer of long sleeves and sweater and jacket she'd had to don against the chill that pervaded her anyway. Beside her, Seifer had on just his trench coat, fluttering open around his broad chest, the keys in his hand jingling impatiently, a wind chime symphony she reached out with a frown to stop.

Rinoa and Squall held onto one another for a long time.

Seifer kept clearing his throat.

Quistis poked him sharply in the side.

"What?" he hissed.

"You know what."

"If Pubes and his princess want to try and make another baby, they need to do it on their own time." He shook the keys again, and Quistis slid her hand over his, bare skin to bare skin because she'd forgotten her gloves, and he never wore any, not when he needed them; Seifer tried to yank his fingers back, so she clamped hers down hard, trapping the keys between their palms.

"If you're going to act like a child, then I'm going to hold your hand like one." she whispered to him in her best instructor voice. "Let them say good-bye."

He mumbled something under his breath that she would have given him detention for had she wielded that kind of authority over him anymore.

She could see adulation on Squall's face out of the corner of one eye, and it made her chest hurt. It was not the starry-eyed hero worship of the fan club that stared creepily from the back of her classroom, just the simple and honest gaze of a man in love, looking down into the face of the woman who'd thawed his cold little heart like he couldn't see anything else. It was a dual pain, a brushstroke of genuine regret for her friends and their separation, laid down next to the stripe of the remorse for herself, that she didn't and would probably never have the same thing.

She well understood the impracticality of love; letting something all-consuming take over, putting the heart before the mind-that was illogical, unsound. The scholar half of her, the teacher who spent most of her thoughts on assignments and explanations and pre-test preparation-that part could not find a single advantage to the act of falling in love. She had tried it once, this part of Quistis reminded herself, dipped a toe in the water, turned her classroom into a featureless slate upon which she could write in the details of the fairytales she spun to herself, the classic love story she knew could unfold between the two of them if Squall would just give her a chance. Forgetting, in the process, twenty other expectant faces needing her to lead them through the mystifying coil of hedge maze that was all the administrative procedure involved in learning how to kill a man. Forgetting that she had a world in which he was not the center, the sun, and it was waiting for her to come back down to earth.

What, precisely, had it all added up to anyway? A battered ego and an even more fragile heart, cracked and bleeding a little around the edges as a dark-haired stranger swooped in and stole him instead? What good had any of her pining or daydreaming done her-what had it _accomplished_?

Nothing. And so, the academic fraction that made up the core of the woman that was Quistis Trepe insisted, love was useless. She could do without it-was in fact _better off _without it.

It was an easy resolve, in the silence of her empty classroom. But out in the daylight, out in the reality of hand-holding couples strolling dockside paths offering romantic sunset views-

She was reminded that she was still human, still a living, breathing entity that wanted everything they had. The machine that was Garden chewed up and digested the pre-pubescent child she had been upon arrival-and spit out a soldier, cold-functioning warrior wearing the imprint of her training like a barcode on her soul. Commodity; that was what she was, and everything she did and breathed and ate was all for Garden, for the hallowed institute that had scooped up a lonely unloved child and become a symbol that meant home. That stood for stability. She did not need love; it had never been there for her anyway. Garden had molded and kneaded her like pliable clay, casting her in its image, in a role she could take pride in.

Because it gave her a reason. Because it had _purpose_. She was not Quistis Trepe, just another line of neat penmanship on a census form somewhere-she was _Quistis Trepe_, instructor number fourteen, rank A SeeD, a prodigy the likes of which had not been seen for years. Generations, perhaps.

And yet-

Garden had not been able to stomp out every remnant of that blue-eyed little girl, dancing on a beach just to watch her skirt twirl.

And neither had she.

That little girl wanted without reason, and cared without reservation. She did not even take into consideration that compassion was not necessary to follow an order, that it was in fact a hindrance when the comrade beside you might take a spike of blade thrust through the throat, and go down spitting pieces of larynx. When you had to hook a man's eye with the point of your thumb, because you had nothing else and his hands were tightening, tightening, tightening, strangling away light and air and life-

Seifer's fingers twitched in hers.

She studied his unsmiling profile without turning her head.

Ellone's assertion kept chasing itself through her mind:

_"A man doesn't go scrounging through old poetry books he hates just to make a woman happy if he doesn't have feelings for her."_

She was still struggling with the impossibility of that statement.

Seifer Almasy had led a string of women through his life and into his bed and booted them back out the other side just as quickly. Before his very public fall, she had wasted frustrating amounts of time redirecting the giggling attentions of smitten cadets passing him notes or watching that handsome profile the way she was doing now. They had swarmed him like moths circling a bulb, and he had never turned any of them down as far as she could tell. He had swelled, _glowed _beneath their notice, this recognition he craved even as a child.

But she had not caught one of her tousle-haired, lipstick-smeared students slipping from his dorm room after curfew for a long, long time. She didn't think his reputation kept them away, or most of them, anyway. If anything, it made him an exhibit, a point of interest along the tour of Second Sorceress War relics new cadets always seemed to take, peeking in on Quistis bent over her desk with awed giggles, watching Zell attack a plate of hot dogs like a vaccuum with even louder, more awestruck giggles. The heroes and the villain, all shacked up together under one roof, magazine-pretty just the way legends should be.

She wondered what had changed for him. Certainly not his hormones; she didn't know any twenty-one-year-old man with anything other than sex on his mind.

The shiver that jumped her arm like the twitch of an epileptic brushed it up against him.

Seifer flicked a glance at her. "Cold?"

"Unfortunately, yes, even with-"

He cut her off. "Too bad. Shoulda' worn something heavier, huh, Instructor? So much for all those lectures on being prepared." He let his lips twist into a smirk she recognized from the back of her classroom.

Quistis sighed. So much for the glimpses of gentleman she had begun to notice surfacing in him. She had probably imagined them anyway.

She shivered again, and hunched lower, trying to disappear into the folds of her coat. It was rude of him to be so insistent, but she did wish just a little that Squall and Rinoa would hurry things along. She couldn't feel her toes anymore.

"Tch." Seifer rolled his eyes. Before she could stop him, he had his hand out and away from the tangle of her fingers, and down like a band of steel across her arm.

He yanked hard on her.

"Seifer-"

Her stumble became an abrupt halt, stopped by the oustretched barrier of his arm.

And then that arm was around her, mirroring the other, his coat a spread of tattered cloak around them both, her back pressed up against his chest, his chin on her head.

She froze.

* * *

><p>This is the beginning shift of her perception:<p>

His chest is a long warm column of knotted-up soldier's muscle at her back. His hands around the lapels of his coat are cross-hatched in lines of scar that run like grooves of track line across his knuckles, and frosted in soft blonde down.

They are the same hands that tried to kill her, in the once upon a time ago of a horribly distorted realization of a childhood dream, but they feel different now. They sprout a seedling of warmth and slowly dawning recognition inside her, and that pod of new life cracks and splits and finally opens all the way, putting down roots.

They feel…nice.

_He _feels nice tight up against her like this, his breath a long slow susurration across the top of her head.

She does not quite understand what is happening.

This is the same man whose ego and self-adoration she cannot stand, whose endless back-clap of congratulations for himself is a little spark of flame inside her breast. He is a bully without self-reproach, nasty tyrant who has no reason beyond _just because_. He wants to save the world not because he cares, but because people will remember him for years, eons perhaps, for such a feat, and he does not mind if he has to be the one to burn it.

He is dangerous and twisted and ugly inside-

And he holds her like she will break if he squeezes too hard, like he is afraid that one fractional milimeter of clutch that puts her just one half inch closer will ruin everything, shatter this fragile moment in his arms like it is made of glass.

He is the man who held her while she cried, and tried to kill her friends.

She cannot reconcile the two halves of him.

She is afraid-_terrified_-that if she searches too hard, looks too closely-

He will turn out to be more one than the other, and she is afraid the part of him that is dominant might be something she could let herself begin to tolerate, and, perhaps, one day-

To even like.

She will not let herself even go beyond that possibility.

* * *

><p>Squall had stepped out of Rinoa's arms, and was staring at her.<p>

Self-consciously, she shook Seifer's embrace off her.

The two men exchanged a wordless glare, and standing next to him holding onto his arm, Rinoa, looking frustratingly fresh and beautiful and awake for this awful hour, flashed an artificial smile.

Angelo, lying obediently at Quistis' feet, cocked her head and gave a wag of tail that brushed against the hem of Quistis' pant leg.

"Everybody get in the damn car." Seifer demanded like an exasperated parent commanding his surly brood.

"Ok, Angelo, girl! You heard the man!"

Seifer, in the process of opening the driver's door, jerked his head around. "I'm _not _taking that fucking dog."

Rinoa crossed her arms and narrowed both eyes, her bottom lip extending.

Squall just shook his head.

Five minutes later, they were on the road with Angelo wedged in the back seat next to Quistis, who was as thoroughly overjoyed at the arrangement as Seifer's tight-lipped scowl in the rearview mirror suggested he was.

* * *

><p>He stood with his toes in the water.<p>

He was thinking about walking all the way in.

That spectrum of white that was his pain dangled like a hammer over his head, waiting to drop.

He knew it could wait a long, long time. It had let him survive the death of his wife and his child, after all, and yet it remained, still swaying, still swinging back and forth and back and forth, and so he had to believe it was saving itself for something truly spectacular. Something that would take from Cid Kramer everything he had ever loved and ever even considered loving.

And so, he had decided to beat it. To rob it of its triumph, and end this punch line of an existence he kept hoping would let go its hold on him at any moment, this echoing void of childless beach house and the corresponding abyss of his wife's death that stretched for an eon inside of him.

The ocean became a mirror beneath the skeletal matchsticks of his legs, but it was not showing him his face.

_A head taller than the rest of the crowd, and lurking along the fringes; this was the grown-up version of the giggling young boy who'd piggybacked his shoulders with a smile the man rarely cracked anymore. _

_This was the boy who had worn spotlight like a second skin, pushing himself to the forefront of all Edea's home videos, skulking like an invader now, trying to make 6' 3" of broad-shouldered soldier into something that was unnoticeable. _

_Edea had broken something vital inside of this man who used to smile, and he could barely stand to watch it. _

_Cid could feel the tight bow of his own smile, fragile, hurting his cheek skin. "Hello, Seifer. It's good to see you again." _

_Green eyes looked him over with the same disgust Quistis had not been able to hide in time, and something inside Cid shriveled._

_He held onto his smile. "Did you read her letter?" he asked softly. "All she ever wanted at the end was your forgiveness, Seifer." The smile was off his face now, but no one expected him to keep it anyway. _

_A heavily-muscled forearm came up to scratch the back of his neck. "I threw it away." His voice was a short harsh bark, and the piece of Cid that shriveled in on itself quailed even more, shrinking like a chastised child under that angry glare. _

_"Seifer-"_

_"You disgust me, old man." _

_Somehow, this registered through the separate ache that was the loss of Selphie, festering like an untreated wound inside his chest. _

_"You don't have a fuckin' clue about anything." His voice had become a hiss. "You just sit here all day feeling sorry for yourself-you ever think maybe there are people that need you to act like the fucking father you tried passing yourself off as? You weren't the only one who lost Matron. You were just the only one who dumped all your responsibilities on someone else like a fucking coward."_

_And then he walked away._

He didn't understand about that pain spectrum, that swaying, breeze-stirred hammer blow biding its time, waiting for the right moment. If he had just _known _what it was like for Cid, this vacant house that smelled like his wife and surrounded him like her embrace in the brief moment of time between sleep and wake when he could pretend she was still here-

He would not have said those things. He would not have _meant _those things. He would realize that without his wife, without his _children_, Cid Kramer's life was as dusty and moth-riddled as the side of closet that used to hold her clothes, glaringly empty like the stretch of beach outside the lighthouse.

His _children_-

His longing for them speared him with a tongue of flame that burned everything in its path.

Those dismal wrecks of human being standing on this shoreline just a handful of weeks ago mourning the first of them to go-those were not his children anymore. They were the neatly regimental lines of soldier he had shaped them into, elite killers that used to be giggling boys and girls playing in the sand between his toes and the waves that licked his heels.

He had groomed them, taken normal lives and chances and possibilities away before they even existed.

Selphie-beautiful, cheerful, not-quite-twenty-year-old Selphie with her whole life ahead of her-she had become one of his victims. The rest would follow whether he lived or died, because he had begun the process, started the cycle-

And now, it could not be stopped.

But at least, he did not have to watch it.

Cid took a step forward.

_-you disgust me old man-_

The gulls that screamed above him wheeled and swooped and circled, watching for bread crumbs.

Or, perhaps, cheering him on.

_-daddy, daddy, watch this look how many marshmallows I can fit in my mouth all at once see-_

Surf like an icy fist closed around his calf.

-_you just sit here all day feeling sorry for yourself-you ever think maybe there are people that need you to act like the fucking father you tried passing yourself off as-_

Edea. She was somewhere beyond, waiting for him, and he couldn't stop now.

_-matwon, seifer bit me again-_

_-daddy daddy cid cid look at me I'm so pretty-_

Coward.

Pitiful.

_Failure_.

-_you disgust me, old man-_

He began to sob as the first curl of wave that reached his kneecap soaked his pants, and leapt up for him like her arms, a smooth arc of embrace that came around him in a hold he had been waiting a very long time for.

Impossibly, he felt warm.

_-fucking coward-_

His legs would not take him any farther.

He folded down onto the beach, going to his knees with his face in his hands.

Above him, the gulls continued to spiral and twist on currents of updraft, shrieking taunts.

* * *

><p>Headache like a foot-long javelin of railroad spike nailed him between the eyes.<p>

Two hours on the road, and already he wanted to kill himself.

Two hours on the road, and Rinoa had already needed to stop to use the bathroom. Twice. When he had suggested she find some way to hold it for longer than two fucking seconds, she lectured him on pregnancy and all the side effects that came along with it, because she was apparently a fucking expert three months into her first one. Then, because impending motherhood had somehow also turned her into the proverbial wise man on top of the mountain, she had started cheerfully giving him advice on everything; his road rage, his hair, his lack of smiling-on and on and on, until he wanted to drive the car into oncoming traffic.

When he very kindly suggested what she could do with her newfound 'wisdom'-mainly, which orifice she could stick it in-Rinoa began to cry (another side effect she sagely informed him later) and Grandma Quistis, who'd spent most of the trip thus far complaining about how fast he was driving, switched over to lecturing him on being a jerk.

Or not being one. Whatever. He stopped paying attention ten seconds in anyway.

Rinoa's mutt smelled like wet socks, and he could swear the stupid thing was giving him the evil eye. Quistis, jammed in next to it looking sleepy and grumpy, certainly was. She met his eyes in the rearview mirror.

They spent a good half of the trip engaging in a juvenile staring contest, interrupted here and there by Rinoa's screamed protests that he was about to drive off the road-which was a fucking exaggeration; he hit _one _ugly mailbox and his passengers all had fucking coronaries, and, in Angelo's case, an accident he had to scrub out of the seats before the stain and corresponding smell could set in and ruin the upholstery.

He could happily murder them all with Hyperion-dog, former instructor, stupid, nagging princess, and himself for good measure.

What was supposed to be a two day trip spilled over into three when Quistis took over after the mailbox incident, and the rest of their journey became a snail crawl of premature braking and an absolute disregard for any sort of speed limit-which wasn't five, the last time he'd checked. This was all punctuated by frequent rest stops along the way, which the stupid dog took as an opportunity to run around like an addict high on crack. Somehow, it became _his _fucking job to chase the stupid thing, with Rinoa standing by the car holding her stomach and screaming instructions at him, and Quistis laughing at him from the driver's seat.

Following Raijin's directions-which turned out to be as clear and concise as Chicken Wuss' various cafeteria conspiracy theories-took an additional three hours of backtracking and arguments between Seifer and Quistis on top of the extra day, the former insisting he'd written down every fucking word exactly the way Raijin had spoken it, the latter politely suggesting that he might need his hearing checked, because there was no possible way anyone thought 'you take that one road and go past the kinda' blue-looking house thing ya' know' was an adequate description.

Regardless, a hundred years later, Quistis pulled up a coil of graveled drive that switched back on itself for a good mile and a half before flaring out into a dusty bowl of front yard that was more a collection of scrub brush and straggling weeds than an actual yard, bringing the car to a stop behind a rusty old pick-up.

The town Raijin and Fujin had chosen to make their home reminded him of Fishermen's Horizon, small and indiscriminate and coated in the saltwater reek of nearby ocean and dead fish. It appeared to be home to approximately four people, all of whom had gathered curiously along what Seifer supposed must be considered the outskirts; a toothless old man holding a fluffy ball of rat-tailed thing he assumed was meant to be a dog, an even older woman who blatantly checked out his ass when he staggered into the folded-over back stretch that popped the vertebrae in his spine like gunshots, and the familiar, beaming faces of Raijin and Fujin.

Behind them on the front porch was a swing that looked like it had been painted with a shotgun, which meant Raijin had probably done it himself, and the touches of color he knew had been added by Fujin; a stripe of canary yellow on the wooden arm rest of that haphazardly splashed porch swing that was an obvious attempt at covering Raijin's sloppy fuck-up, and the trailing creepers of begonias in sunset colors of red and orange and yellow, drooping from hanging flower pots.

Beyond that comma mark of silver, bright as a sickle curve of blade, she was smiling at him. She was smiling at him without wariness or distaste or well-deserved anger-

And something inside of him unclenched, like a tension-knotted fist coming undone.

Angelo exploded from the car and began to circle him in long loops of white and brown that blurred together, barking spastically.

His friend's neighbors, apparently deciding this was the most exciting thing that was going to happen, began to leave, the old man holding his rat carefully out of the way of Rinoa's much larger pet as he walked off, and Raijin leaped down off the porch with a grin big enough to swallow all three of their visitors.

He picked Seifer up off his feet in a crush of bear hug that popped three ribs and possibly broke another one, pounding him on the back so hard that for one panicky moment Seifer was convinced he'd just swallowed his tongue. "Man, it's good to see you, ya' know?"

"You too." Seifer wheezed.

"IDIOT! BREAKING HIM!" Fujin yelled from the front steps, crossing her arms.

"Nah, Fu-he's fine." Raijin set him back down and dusted something from his shoulders, little grains of white that puffed up to stab him in the eyes. "Sorry, ya' know-Fu an' me were makin' a cake for you guys."

"Oooh! I hope it's chocolate!" Rinoa crowed, slamming the passenger door. "Seifer, can you grab my bag? I hafta' use the bathroom again. Thanks!"

"_No_; it's not one bag, it's eight hundred and fucking fifty. Tell me, Princess, did you pack the whole fucking closet, or just the shit Pubes bought for Dak's annual 'Hottest She-Man' contest?"

"ASSHOLE!" Fujin hollered down to him with a nasty glare.

Rinoa, already in the process of mounting the steps, turned around with that stubborn look on her face, the one that had alerted him instantly when they were dating to just buy the Hyne damn flowers she wanted, or endure several days worth of obstinate pouting.

Why the _hell _had he ever found Caraway's spoiled little princess of a daughter attractive? Oh right; because daddy hated him and said princess was looking to rebel.

"I've got it." Quistis said wearily, beginning to pull jumbles of luggage pieces in eye-searing shades of pink from the car.

"Let me help with that, ya' know." Raijin offered, loading up his arms with the suitcases and toiletry cases and spare shoe boxes Quistis handed to him like it was nothing. The man was a fucking pack mule.

"INSIDE." Fujin ordered him, and then vanished into the house.

He could not stop the smile that broke the seal on his heart and spread tendrils of buoyancy through his whole chest, and when he mounted that first step of creaking porch wood, Seifer noticed Quistis out of the corner of his eye, mirroring that foreign twist of lip quirk with a quiet one of her own.

* * *

><p>"Whoa!" Raijin yelled, surprisingly agile for such a large man as he sprinted across the cracked patio blocks of the backyard-facing deck in various stages of re-design, aiming himself like a missile for Quistis.<p>

Seifer reached her first.

He knocked her out of the way just as her fingers gave a sharp twist, and a surge of orange like a sputter of out-of-control fire spell obliterated the world.

He stepped back just in time to avoid burning his eyebrows off.

"You're not supposed to use that much lighter fluid, ya' know?" Raijin said, blocking her out from the little grid square of sanded-down wood that was the home to his grill, a precious and time-consuming part of his life judging by the way he handled it and the way Fujin grumbled under her breath about it.

Quistis' cheeks had gone bright red. "Sorry."

"Hyne, woman, sit down before you light us all on fire."

"I was trying to help-"

"You almost burned Seifer, ya' know? Why don'tcha go help Fu in the kitchen, ya' know?"

"SEXIST!" his wife yelled through the open screen door.

"She touched my grill, Fu." he whined.

"OBSESSION."

"It's not an obsession; the man at the store said it's a legitimate hobby, ya' know?"

"CRACKPOT."

Seifer retreated to a cracked plastic lawn chair-one of five spread out in a shallow arc around a matching table-laughing as he went.

They hadn't even changed; that was the first thing he'd noticed. Fujin's beratings, Raijin's wincing apologies-they were all still there, and they warmed him like the crackle of flame spitting out the top of the fire pit Raijin had lit earlier that evening. He pulled his chair up close to it, the neck of the beer bottle Raijin had offered him from the cooler beside the grill dangling from his fingers, the trickle of bonfire heat slowly relaxing muscles kinked up with three days worth of sitting on his ass in a car. He stretched his long legs all the way out in front of him, reveling in the ability to do that, taking a sip of his drink and tilting his head back to watch the semicircle of red in the sky above begin its slow descent.

The screen door banged, and he twisted around to see Quistis slink out onto the porch, looking embarrassed again.

"What happened? You blow up the stove?" He snickered.

"_No_." She crossed her arms, giving him a stern glare.

"She put salt in _what_?" Raijin yelped from inside the kitchen, and now that flush was back, spreading out along the curves of her cheekbones.

"Found something you're not very good at, huh, Instructor?"

Her glare did not waver, but she began dragging one of the chairs across the yard toward him, pausing halfway to adjust her glasses. "Apparently, I'm as adept in the kitchen as you are behind the wheel." Quistis remarked dryly.

"Hyne, I hit _one _fuckin' mail box."

"And nearly took out some poor old woman in the process, who is probably right now in the hospital coding off and on from the numerous heart attacks you gave her."

Seifer flipped his hand in the air. "She shouldn't have been standing there."

"Yes, what a horrible crime-imagine the audacity it takes to check your own mail with the assumption that some mercenary going one hundred over the speed limit in a sedan won't splatter you all over the sidewalk?"

"Tch. Just because your top speed is twenty-five on a downhill-"

"There are speed limits for a _reason_, Seifer."

"Blah blah follow some stupid rules blah blah or else blah blah because I said so." He flipped his hand again.

She sat down with a shake of her head, but he could see the tiniest of smiles sketched out across her lips, hovering there like the slow prickle of warmth that undulated beneath his skin. He was getting real fucking sick of her always doing that to him, cracking his chest like triple bypass patient and sliding everything that was Quistis Trepe-quiet smile and eyes and soft graze of touch-all inside of him, where he could look and pine and stretch out to try and reach but never touch.

At least she pushed his mother right out of his skull.

He tried not to let his smile go on too long as he stared at her.

It happened anyway, except this time, his heart stuttered and flopped over and died, just for the brief semi second of moment it took to re-start it, because she was retuning it, she was staring right back at him with something in her eyes he was pretty sure hadn't been there before-

The door slammed again, spilling a cursing Raijin staggering under a platter of uncooked beef patties out onto the deck, and Seifer jumped, spilling beer on himself.

His drink spread like a piss stain across the front of his pants. "_Shit_."

He watched Quistis suppress a laugh under her hand, and stood up, scowling. "Raij! Where'd you put my shit?"

"Couch in the front room." his friend grunted, setting the platter down on a little wooden bench obviously there for just such a purpose. "Fu said you can have that and the girls'll take the guest room, ya' know. I flipped the cushions for ya' already."

Seifer eyed him suspiciously as he set his beer down next to the wobbly right front leg of his chair. "Why'd you need to flip the cushions?"

"Well, me an' Fu were gettin' a little somethin' going on it the other day, 'ya know, and-"

"Fuck. Stop right there."

He stalked up onto the porch and past the lumbering hulk of his friend, trying to ignore Quistis' laughter behind him.

Seifer let the door slam behind him.

* * *

><p>Through the large expanse of kitchen window squatting above the sink he rinsed that night's dishes in, Raijin kept an eye on the pinwheel spark of emerging stars, and the sun-glow of two blonde heads visible just over the tops of the chairs that seemed to be slowly gravitating closer to one another.<p>

Fujin walked out of the hallway, the ocean gurgle of the toilet that always took a while to recover from each flush following her out into the kitchen.

"Don't go out there. They're having a moment, ya' know?"

"REALLY?" She paused with her hand on the sliding glass door they had closed a couple of hours before to keep the chill of nighttime from invading the whole house, her one good eye sparkling. "KISSING?" She squinted through the glass at them, then came over to join him in front of the sink.

"No; he gave her his coat."

"BORING."

"He's gotta' take it slow, ya' know? This stuff takes time to build. Hey, I think he's going to put his arm around her."

" KISSING YET?"

"Nah; false alarm, ya' know. Just reachin' out to stir the fire."

"TOO SLOW."

"Come on, Fu. What would you have him do, ya' know? He's a romantic. He's gotta' take his time, ya' know?"

"ROMANTIC? SEIFER?"

"Yeah, deep down and stuff, ya' know. Remember we used to catch him sneakin' fairytales in the library when he was a cadet?"

"HOMO." She snickered.

"He just liked the happy endings. He never got one of those, ya' know?"

She blew hair from her eyes. It fluttered like tattered dove wings, flapping halfheartedly against a feeble breeze, and he reached a hand up to secure it behind her ear.

The soft smile she gave him was worth every rebuke.

"NO SPYING."

"I wasn't, ya' know, someone just has to watch out for the kid. He could use a little relationship advice from a happily married man, ya' know? I just want him to be happy, Fu, and watchin' him today-I think Instructor Trepe's the one who might be able to do that for him, ya' know?"

She gave him another smile, and brushed her hand down his cheek. "UPSTAIRS."

He kept hand-drying dishes like he hadn't heard her, polishing the plate in his hands to a mirror shine of glossy oval that showed him the grin he tested out in it. "Where's Rinoa, ya' know?"

"SLEEPING ALREADY." She set her slender little hand down on the corded-up cable braid that was his muscular forearm, and lifted her eyebrows suggestively. "_UPSTAIRS_. NOW."

"Huh? _Oh_."

He let her lead him away by the hand, taking one final glance out the window before it was out of view.

* * *

><p>"Ara."<p>

"No."

"Crux."

"No."

"Gemini."

"Seifer, I _just _said it-" He gave her a naughty boy grin that made her heart twitch just the tiniest little bit in her chest, a subtle acceleration of a thump that she could easily ignore. "You know what it is." Quistis accused, crossing her arms beneath the faded drape of trench coat she wore like a blanket, spread out across her lap and tucked up underneath her chin.

"Pubis." he said, taking a swig from his beer.

"Pu_ppis_."

He smiled again.

He looked content, Quistis thought, sneaking another glance at him, his chair tipped back on two legs and his feet up on the edge of the fire pit, eyes lidded in sleepiness.

It was odd, watching the old Posse come together like nothing had changed, a smooth-oiled machine of affectionate insults, an integration as seamless as though it had never stopped working in the first place. Seifer visibly relaxed around them, becoming a man who smiled without malice, and laughed without bitterness.

He became a man who might belong in this sort of world, this semicircle of fire pit and chewed-up plastic of secondhand lawn chair, a normal young man with a family who loved him, and whose fingernails he'd never had to clean half moons of old blood from underneath. If she squinted her eyes just slightly, Quistis could see him in this backyard of bare dirt and tentative border line of plants not certain if they wanted to survive or not, teaching a boy with green eyes and bright blonde hair to play catch. Balancing a little girl on his hip, pulling faces that made her giggle.

His mother had not broken him, and his ambitions amounted to nothing greater than fixing the rear coil of his aging but well-maintained vehicle, and making love to his pretty young wife.

Maybe he would do that. Maybe he could carve out a life here that was simple and honest and serene, a life without excitement, a life old Seifer would have stabbed through the heart, just to watch it squirm.

But wasn't that precisely why two ex-soldiers had escaped to this little seaside town with its single paved road and neatly-arranged line of shops? The war had been enough excitement for any of them; it had certainly been enough for Quistis. Now there was just weariness left behind in that raw festering gut wound of memories and nightmares and leering demons it had opened inside of her, and she was just so very damn tired of it all.

She was only still a soldier, because she did not know how to be anything else. Because she could not cook or sew or nurture-she had tried to nurture them all, to _mother _them all, and still they pulled away, still they circled a drain filled with the blood and guts and half-hearted glory that was supposed to make her feel better, slipping through her fingers, rippling away like stream bed flowing the wrong way-

And she could never catch them-they rattled away like the skeletons of deciduous leaves flowing away down that swollen gutter, and she could run and run and run-

But she could never catch them in time. She could never _save _them in time.

She had not saved Selphie in time.

Quistis watched the moon gild his scar, and turned away.

No, he would never be that man, that holographic flicker of ghost image piggybacking children and playing fetch.

And she would never be someone's pretty wife, waiting with dinner on the table and a smile on her face. Just two decades into their lives, and already they were broken beyond repair, defective goods not fit for bargain bin demotion.

Quistis adjusted his coat, slipping it behind her so she could pull it closed around her, letting out a little sigh that pulled his head around. He didn't say anything and neither did she, and a moment later, his head swiveled back around, slanted back to study that expanse of star-studded black far above them.

"I should have known it was you." she said quietly, staring into the fire.

"Huh?"

"The e-mails." She didn't know why, but for some reason she smiled. It was not cruelly mocking or amused, just a little self-deprecating. '3877SA?' The first four numbers of your cadet number, and your initials, of course."

She saw his mouth twitch and then flatten back out. "Yeah, you're a lot stupider than I give you credit for, Instructor."

Quistis rolled her eyes.

They sat in silence for another moment, and she couldn't tell if it was uncomfortable or not. There was something strained, something anticipatory about it, and that she did not quite understand. She heard him take another sip of his drink, and then set it aside, down on the edge of the firepit where it clinked like a muffled bell. "Were you…" She didn't look at him. "Were you trying to give me a hint, with the poems? I always wondered that; they were all sea-themed, and I always wondered if that was supposed to be a clue, or just a coincidence."

He laced his hands behind his head in a way that she thought looked very slow and measured, and out of the corner of one eye, she watched his Adam's apple bob in a swallow. "It wasn't supposed to be anything."

_-a man doesn't go scrounging through old poetry books he hates just to make a woman happy if he doesn't have feelings for her-_

It wasn't supposed to be anything-of course, that made far more sense than Ellone's suggestion. None of it was supposed to _mean _anything-just a bored man playing tricks on a lonely woman-

The sudden blaze of her anger fed Quistis the smoking ashes of her heart. "It wasn't a very funny joke."

"Look, Trepe, I already _told _you it wasn't a fucking joke." he snapped, his hands whipping out in an arc of fighter's hiss, stabbing air on their way down like he wanted to kill it.

They landed clenched up in his lap, and still he wouldn't look at her.

"I don't understand what other reason you could possibly have for doing it." she insisted, ignoring Ellone's voice in the back of her head. "You carried on for months with me, making me think you were someone else, someone I could-"

"I didn't make you think a damn _thing_. Any idiot little Prince Charming fantasies you had were all your own, _Instructor_." He emphasized her title just the way he used to, like it was an insult, something she should shrink before and not wear with honor, like the precisely-arranged rows of her hero's medals.

She pinched the bridge of her nose, hard, like she could drive everything right out of her head with that ungentle pressure of thumb and forefinger.

"You liked me just fine when there was a fucking computer between us, didn't you? That's what you're really pissed about." He did look at her now, with a sneer that reached all the way down inside her, and plucked out something vital. "Thought I looked like Leonhart and we were going to get married and live in a house by the sea and have a bunch of fuckin' babies, huh?"

"Squall, at least, would have been preferable." She took ice like the arctic wasteland of Trabia, and infused her voice with it.

He took it with barely a wince, to his credit.

She thought it was the end, and then suddenly, he was on his feet, towering over her, _looming _over her, blotting out the sky and the distant fireflies of remote star scatter with his broad shoulders.

He leaned in so close she could smell alcohol on his breath, and count every individual freckle in the faint, faint dusting of them that sprinkled his nose.

"Pubes would kill every single fucking one of you if it meant he could save his precious little princess. He'd cut your throat without a second fucking thought if you were between him and Rinoa, Trepe, know that? You fucking get that?"

Her hands came unconsciously to the lapels of his coat, pulling them together like this was an adequate barrier, like this could block the rage that lit his eyes like that fever spike of long-ago madness in this man who had once been a pretty slave boy, kneeling at his mother's feet.

His own hands shot out to grasp the fistfuls of material she gathered up like they could save her, freezing Quistis.

"And you know what? You know the fucking ironic thing? Leonhart and me finally have something in common. I get it. He'd burn the whole fucking world down for one woman. So would I. That's why I spent hours going through that shitty book, just to find something I thought you'd like."

"I-Seifer, you've been drinking-"

"Are you _getting what I'm saying_?" he snarled, giving her a little shake, not anything jarring enough to hurt, just a violent snap of his hands that was more a flutter of coat lapel than anything, tearing loose from her fingers to flare out around her chest.

"Stop." She stood up, the coat sliding down to land in a bundle of dirty gray and faded strawberry between them.

"_No_."

"_Seifer_." She had slipped into her instructor's bark without realizing it, facing him down like he was just one more wayward student to be guided back on track. "Please stop before you say something you regret."

* * *

><p>And here it came: the conciliatory head pat, the subtle hand wipe of I-can't-believe-I-just-fucking-touched-that clean up, and the gentle admonition of go-away-now that was the dismissive flip of wrist he could already see in his head.<p>

His anger burned him alive. He had fucking _paid _his goddamned dues already, hadn't he? Hadn't he paid out more than a lifetime of dividends in nightmares and flashbacks and the gut heave of the guilt he couldn't believe he felt? Wasn't it fucking time just one fucking thing in his whole _fucking _life went right?

Fuck his old dreams, that blaze of glory he wanted to go down in-his knight's sword and the decapitated heads of legendary monsters at his feet-he didn't want any of it anymore. He'd gone down that road, and somewhere along the way, he'd gotten lost in a back alley that smelled like his mother and tightened around him like a slave collar.

Now, he just wanted something from her. _Anything_. He wasn't even asking for fucking much-just the tiniest _suggestion _of a look that wasn't derision or mild distaste-he'd earned that, at least, hadn't he?

He disgusted himself.

He fucking _loathed _himself.

He was a goddamned dog on a tether again, responding to ripples of feedback through the line like a good little puppet. And Quistis-

She didn't even realize it. She didn't have any fucking _clue _she had this power over him. She could crush him with a _word_, mention Leonhart's name with that look on her face one more time, and unstring everything inside of him that held him up straight, the way his mother had done with a touch a look a-_shudder of headboard banging plaster_ _crown mold-_

"It's just the alcohol, Seifer." She said it like she was trying to convince herself, like a teeth grit of smile grimly trying to make everything all right again, and he stepped up into her personal space once more.

Her eyes were so fucking blue.

"You know it isn't the fucking alcohol. Don't be such a dumb bitch, Trepe."

Her hand flashed up through a curve of backhand before he could stop it, and smashed his right cheek hard enough to pull the stars down from that endless galaxy above his head, and line them up in front of his eyes.

He stumbled backward, holding his face.

She had her hands balled into fists; this was child Quistis facing him now, angry because he'd just stomped her castle or broken her doll or stolen her cookie. Except bossy little Quisty had never hit this fucking hard, and he'd never felt like apologizing afterward.

"Don't try to compare yourself to Squall, or pretend you're capable of anything remotely close to what he feels for Rinoa." she said quietly, her voice a fucking hammer, driving home the nails that punctured his gut one fatal, slow leak of shrapnel wound at a time. "I've known you my whole life, Seifer, and you have _never_-"

"Don't _fucking _lecture me. You don't have a fucking clue how I feel, Quistis."

She had the bridge of her nose between her fingers again. "I know you are drunk, and that you've never had the slightest interest in any woman-including myself-beyond getting them in your bed."

"Tell yourself whatever you have to." he snapped. "I'm going to bed."

He slammed his beer bottle over the side and into the fire with an afterthought of a sidekick, the label going up in a reptile hiss of flame.

* * *

><p>She fingered a corner of triple-creased letter, staring down at it in the dim circlet of lamp flare her nightstand leaked.<p>

This was someone else's personal correspondence, a final moment between mother and son-

And she had stolen it. She had _read _it.

She had not intended to, but when she'd watched that furtive little kick out of the corner of one eye, keeping her gaze squarely on him so he would not know she had seen it, when she'd realized exactly what it was he was attempting to hide from her-

A part of Quistis burned with addict need, flaring hot and hard enough to short out her conscience for the eye blink of moment it took her to quietly retrieve that slip of crumpled-up note the second he turned his back, and slip it into her pocket.

-_two years later, he's still having flashbacks so violent he wakes up screaming most nights-_

She had survived the Second Sorceress War on the right side, living out the warped version of his childhood dream from the hero's perspective, the one he had always assumed would belong to him. She knew every detail of plot twist, every subtle nuance of fairytale deviation, and yet-

She did not know how the villain woke up to find out he was the antagonist. She did not know what that long-ago little boy on a beach the color of his hair thought when he understood it was no longer his job to save the princess, but to kill her. To murder her in cold blood, and laugh while he slashed and hacked and cut away pieces of finger and hair ribbon and lip corner.

He wore his nonchalance like his battered coat, varnish-exterior that polished the sharp angles of the old Seifer Almasy into something that could be admired, if the admirer were foolhardy and just a little naïve. If he insisted long enough, hard enough that he was just what the world had been holding its breath for, sooner or later, people would begin to believe.

And they had. Not many, his Posse being two of the most loyal examples. But he was handsome and skilled and unrelenting, and so yes, some of the cadets had begun to accept-Seifer Almasy would one day make something of himself. Yes, his instructors would agree, if only he would _listen_, if only he would _apply _himself.

But legends did not follow rules. Legends rose like a star, and fell in the blaze of its destruction, bright and brilliant and fleeting.

-_I took on the sorceress' burden because I wanted to protect all of you, because I was afraid she'd take one of you instead…and then I did nothing but hurt you, didn't I-_

She was staring at the folded-up square of its back, but she could see every word anyway, seared like a brand into her memory.

-_that little boy was going to be a hero, and I made him, I made you-_

The page she had written him bled grief like the elongated streaks of water damage dragging a word here and there down into the bottom margin. She didn't know who they were from-Edea hunched over a knife-gouged old prison desk waiting to die-

Or Seifer, alone in his room reading a letter he had callously denied even caring about.

-_and you know what you know the fucking ironic thing leonhart and me finally have something in common I get it he'd burn the whole fucking world down for one woman so would I-_

His eyes had not looked drunk. They had looked earnest and desolate and a little frightened, but he couldn't possibly, he _couldn't_-

He couldn't feel the way for her that Squall burned for Rinoa. No one ever would-a twenty-one-year-old wreck of a human being raised as cannon fodder, chained to her duty like keelhauled criminal, sinking lower and lower and lower? No one wanted that-no one _deserved _that.

No one had earned a woman with a face as disfigured as her sagging, malnourished soul.

Quistis set Edea's letter carefully down on the nightstand, and tiptoed past Rinoa asleep on the pull-out couch she had insisted on taking, slipping quietly out the door.

The old stairs beneath her feet creaked and moaned, and she tried to pick a deft path through them, setting heel and then toe down just so as she descended, trailing her fingers along the banister Raijin was in the process of stripping and re-painting.

Seifer was a motionless lump on the couch just off to the left of the base of the staircase. The living room window, a panoramic wrap-around of front yard view leaking moonlight down onto his face smoothed out the edges of his scar with finger strokes of flattering silver.

He'd kicked his blanket off at some point throughout the night.

She stared at it for a long time, and then bent over to retrieve it, bringing it slowly up to drape across him, letting it flap down softly so he didn't wake.

_-quisty watch me i'm gonna jump this wave ok-_

He had a long strand of hair straggling down over one eye, and she brushed it very carefully away.

_-what's the matter instructor i make you nervous-_

_-quisty look _look _matron said i jumped so high it was like i was flying-_

She brushed her thumb slowly across the curve of his cheekbone, a feather light graze of touch she terminated at his temple.

* * *

><p><em>The sun is an artist's stroke of ocher over his head.<em>

_Her hair is brighter; it gathers up noon sky like the focusing beam of a laser, and stabs him through the eyes with it._

_For a moment, he is blind with her. She is the only thing he can see, for miles; dazzling ribbons of solar flare caught up in his fingers in tendrils like net weave, looped in circlets of wedding band around his knuckles-_

_Swan's arch of pale neck, beating with the drum solo rhythm of her pulse-_

_Tentative lip curve that is a hint of shy smile-_

_Her eyes are so, so fucking blue. _

_And they are looking at him like he is the only thing in this whole world that she wants to see. _

_No one has ever looked at him this way before. He has never been anyone's whole world before, you know? He has never wanted to be; a tag-along will only slow him down, weight his dream until it is too heavy to carry anymore, and this is unacceptable. _

_But the hint of adoration on her face is worth it._

She _is worth it. _

_But his mother is behind him now, and her arms come up in a sweep of embrace that strokes and kneads and cups him, and those eyes become slits. _

_And then they widen, and there is nothing but horrified disgust in them, all the way down to the bottom. _

_His mother wants him to kill her. _

_He can't do it. He makes a show of it, playacts out a little drama for the stare he can feel chewing through his neck and into his brain-a fist clench of yank that uproots a few strands of bright yellow, a jerk of swan's neck that bares the white quivering column of it for the sliver of sharpened moonlight that is Hyperion, reaching out to kiss it-_

_But he can't go any farther. He cannot push or pull or slide that quicksilver bar of honed mirror edge the way he is supposed to, and his mother knows it. _

_She takes Hyperion away._

_And then she takes his life._

_It is that simple; it is that _quick_, just a heartbeat of moment, a pulse quiver of second where he is holding a custom-molded pommel shaped to fit his hand, and then he is not. _

_Then it is sticking out of him, and steel like a finger of ice is inside of him, bisecting his guts. He can't feel her hair anymore; the severed nerve ends of his ruined spinal cord twitch and sputter and die, and now even that finger of ice is gone._

_He feels nothing. _

_Or, at least, he thinks he does, until his mother grabs her by the chin, and gives it a twist that cracks like a knee-snapped branch. _

_And then he understands. _

_Now he finally, finally fucking gets it. Feeling, sensation-it's not jolts of neural response bleeding out into the brain, telling it this hurts and that feels good-it all mushrooms out from the heart in a smoke screen of pain, jagged as glass shards._

_And his is dying. _

_His mother unsheathes Hyperion from him, and he stumbles and falls, splashing into ankle-deep tide pool._

_He hacks a cough that was supposed to be a question, and a splatter of red fades into a spray of diluted pink in the water beneath his hands. _

_Quistis' head flops and sags and rolls over to blink at him, one final time. _

_And then, in the roaring surf pecking away at the crumbling edge of beach they had all made their home in front of once upon a long time ago, his mother opens her like a fish. _

_From jaw underside to pubic bone, and her guts bulge up out of raw meat fissure like bloated corpse entrails. _

_His mother moves the blade back and forth, in and out, a crude simulation of what she does to him each night._

_She is fucking Quistis in that autopsy incision with his knight's sword._

_And all he can do is make a noise like a sob in the back of his throat, the high-pitched gear-up of a child's scream._

_His mother sticks his hand into the lip of the gap she has created._

_-you see seifer you have to do what mommy says do you understand now boy-_

_Her guts are a warm slippery coil of sailor's knot around his fingers._

_He's not dying fast enough. He is stuck in this eternal reality where she is dead and the monster who wears his mother like a mask is not, and her eyes are blue and wide and vacant as the sky-_

_And Joss Malcolm is standing waist-deep in the ocean that is not rolling in far enough to drown him, his jaw hanging at an angle like a broken shutter. _

_-hello prick see what happens you piece of shit that's what you get-_

_-seifer look look this is what happens when you disobey mommy-_

_And his hand wrenches back and twists away but it is still full of her, still convulsed shut around loops and spirals and snarls of intestine that leak blood and shit and saltwater splatters of rain-_

_Those are his tears, because he can't feel his legs but it's not enough, it will never be fucking _enough _he wants to feel _nothing_-_

_His mother is twirling in the waves like a ballroom dancer, and the circles she describes around her with Hyperion fling coils of blood and stomach lining. The lullaby she croons sounds the same as the one she used to sing to him back when she was still Matron, only distorted, a record played backward, scratching out a shriek of feedback that hurts his brain._

_-hush little baby don't say a word-_

_Let me go please just _let me go _I want _out_- _

_-papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird-_

_Quistis' mouth is smeared in red like whore lipstick. _

_Joss Malcolm's jaw clacks and pops and creaks like a crack of arthritic knuckle, and Hyperion closes it all the way for him, finally._

* * *

><p>Parched-desert roof of the mouth, and dry-baked husk of tongue meat.<p>

This was his awakening.

Ragged fringe of battered old throw cover-

Moonlight like long glittering strings of tear track on worn-pale carpeting-

A hump of pillow like boulder underneath his head-

Seifer brought everything back into focus slowly, one at a time, letting the seizure spasm of his hands gradually, carefully relax their death grip on the blanket that had been a pile at his feet when he'd fallen asleep.

Somehow, it had made its way up around his chest and beneath his chin.

He didn't have time to ponder this; nausea like incoming breaker hit the back of his throat, and he bolted from the couch toward the bathroom, his socks skidding on hallway tile.

He barely made it in time.

With his head over the toilet, he threw up until his eyes watered and his head spun and all he could do, all he was capable of, was gripping that little wooden seat until it creaked between his fingers, his stomach and his throat and his eyes burning, fucking _searing, _all the way down into his chest like acid reflux-

Someone's hand touched his back.

He gagged and spat a long drip of bile that congealed like snot on his tongue.

The hand was tentatively rubbing now, looping his shoulders and lower back in soft strokes of hesitant caress that made him shiver all the way down to the toes he curled up underneath him on the tile. This was just fucking perfect, absofuckinglutely _fantastic_-

Five hours or so after she'd watched him clumsily try to declare that she had somehow become the most important fucking thing in his whole life, Quistis got to witness Seifer unman himself in front of the one person he'd rather cut his nutsack off than unravel before.

He was pretty sure he was still crying. Fuck, at this point, he might as well goddamned shit himself; it wasn't like he could really turn her stomach any more than he knew he already had.

He spit again, and reached blindly for the swoop of handle that scorched his fingertips like ice.

"Are you-"

"_Get off me_."

The hand stopped.

He wiped his nose and eyes and mouth, and fumbled around for the lip of the countertop he could just barely feel with his nerveless fingers. The toilet thundered like the ripple of surf that had become his mother's dance floor, and he pulled himself to his feet in front of the sink, turning it on with a vicious wrench of the handle that almost tore it off in his hand. He put his lips to the faucet and sucked water like it was his dying wish, rinsing and spitting over and over and over again until finally there was nothing left but to twist that little nub of handle again.

Silence so loud it hurt his head punched him in the skull.

When he straightened, Seifer could see her in the mirror behind him, wearing an old black t-shirt and nothing else as far as he could tell.

Her legs went on forever beneath that flag of ratty old black.

For once, he could barely even fucking appreciate it.

"Are they always this bad?" she asked him quietly, following him out of the bathroom as he hit the lights and stumbled back into the hall, grabbing for the wall as blood like a roar of incoming ocean exploded in his ears, making everything spin and flex and sway around him.

"What?" he demanded too loudly, a spike of headache sledge hammering him between the eyes as he shuffled shakily back to the couch.

"The nightmares."

"I don't have any goddamned nightmares."

Behind him, she sighed, and he wondered what it would take to make her go the hell away. Maybe he could try kissing her again; that had seemed to work really well last time in scaring her off. Or, well, getting him knocked on his ass, anyway. He probably wasn't up for that just right now.

"Yes, I noticed that." She trailed him all the way back to the couch, flickers of star shadow marking her in dimples of black that reminded him of the endless well bottom of his mother's eyes.

Thousands of tiny little fucking eyes, staring out at him, playing fuckass with the hyperactive pulse he could feel banging up against chest wall that ached like he'd taken a direct hit there.

He shivered.

"You had them in Deling City, too."

Shit. He'd been positive she'd slept through that. He eased himself back down onto that heinous fucking excuse for a pillow Raijin had loaned him, letting one hand burrow into the hair at the nape of his neck. "Drop it, Trepe."

She stood there in front of him with the moon in her hair and her hands full of starlight, open and dangling along her sides, and the look on her face twisted his stomach so hard he thought he was going to have to make another run for the bathroom.

It wasn't pity. He wanted it to be; pity was a weapon he could use to pierce the veil of bleak, echoing fucking _pain _inside of him, slicing through to his heart and the nuclear kiln of his anger that banked itself somewhere just out of reach where he couldn't find it right now. Anger that smoked his heart and shriveled it in his chest, rage that turned his shaking coward's hands into twin lumps of bludgeoning tool-

That was what he needed.

And she wasn't giving it to him. She was just _standing _there, staring at him like she gave a shit, like she fucking _cared_, and he had to hold back another swell of vomit. She didn't give two insignificant little _fucks _about him, so he could just knock the hell off that line of thinking, except there was her hand, touching him again, a wide splay of finger she set down like he might bite her, and he didn't have the self-preserving balls to make her pick it back up.

He wanted her to touch him. It meant she was here, alive, and not flayed open like medical examiner corpse underneath his mother.

It meant, maybe, that there was a small spark of that something, that _anything _that was all he wanted from her.

"What happened to you during the war, Seifer?"

He showed her his teeth, but it was not a smile he peeled his lips open around. "It was fucking great; Matron and I had ice cream for dinner every night." _And then she fucked me, and I kind of sort of wanted it except not really, so it's almost like my own mother raped me, except my dick didn't think so at the time. _

He leaned his back against the couch, and shut his eyes.

It sagged underneath her weight; her warm, warm palm had disappeared from his shoulder, and he wanted it back, he wanted _all _of her, wrapped up around him until he fell back asleep, until his dreams were full of her and not his mother, and he could finally wake up in the morning and look himself in the eye.

She could do that for him. She was warm and innocent as a soldier could possibly be, and she had his heart in her fucking teeth; he could dump everything on her the way they all did, let that bossy little child who'd grown up into a woman who tried too hard to be perfect handle everything, let her take on every detail of the rotten fucking infrastructure that made up Seifer Almasy-

But he didn't. He _couldn't_. What fucking right did he have, dumping all that shit on her? He'd made his fucking bed, and he could lie in it, maggots and shadow and eel squirm of pus pocket infection and all. She didn't deserve any of that; she was the purest fucking thing in his life, which wasn't saying a whole hell of a lot, but he sure as fuck wasn't ruining that the way everything else all seemed to go to shit around him.

"Then why are you waking up with nightmares so bad they make you throw up?"

"Why do you keep wearing your hair down lately?" he snapped back, and he watched one hand go instinctively to her cheek, to the frayed pucker of scar tissue like a circle of tooth print there, and he felt like a fucking ass.

But she was turning toward him now, angled sideways so that she faced him, her bare knee up against his like she didn't even notice.

Seifer moved his. He sure as fuck noticed.

"If I tell you," Quistis said calmly, "will you tell me something about what it was like for you during the war?"

He said nothing.

She let the silence stretch between them, overwrought like a funeral pall, and then she broke it again. "Seifer. It might help if you talked about some of it."

"Well, I don't _want _to." He sounded childish even to himself, and he turned his face away.

"I wear my hair down because of the scar." she said quietly, not looking at him now. A wrinkle of thought furrow sketched itself in a shallow eleven between her eyebrows; he could see it out of the corner of his eye, and he wanted to use his lips to smooth it away.

He had to get a fucking hold of himself.

"At first, I was hopeful-Dr. Kadowaki was injecting it with small doses of Cura, and every week it looked better. I just wanted it all gone; I was tired of people pointing, tired of such a glaring flaw." Her lips curved in just the tiniest of self-deprecating smiles. "It ruined the illusion I worked so hard to build; everyone knew I wasn't perfect all of a sudden, and every time I looked in the mirror, there was my reminder of just that, where I couldn't possibly ignore it. But for a while, I kept telling myself to deal with it, to persevere; it was going away. Soon no one would even remember it had been there. And then the injections stopped working, and Kadowaki told me this was the best improvement I could hope for." Her voice cracked, just a little. "And I realized I was stuck looking at a monster for the rest of my life."

"Are you fucking retarded?" he snapped.

Quistis flinched back, her eyes flaring wide behind those glasses perched just right, perfectly balanced and equidistant across the bridge of her nose. "Excuse me?"

"I said, _Instructor_, are you fucking retarded? You think you look like some kind of sideshow freak, because of that?" He flicked a dismissive point at her cheek. "You're an idiot. You're one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen."

A stain the color of spreading sunset painted her cheeks like cosmetic.

"Haven't seen a drop in Trepie membership have you?" He pointed to his forehead. "You trying to say this ruins my god-like appeal?"

That got a smile out of her, and his chest slowly shrank and compressed and tightened, squeezing his fucking heart like she'd gotten a fist around it. He couldn't even see the disfigurement when he looked at her; she was just Trepe, beautiful, long-legged Quistis with the stranglehold on his chest and the lock on everything his mother had not used up, all the knots and kinks of hopeless tangle she had made of his emotions. Everything, it was all tied up in his old instructor now, and he wished he'd done a better job of telling her that.

"What were you dreaming about?"

He blew out a sigh that sagged his shoulders in its aftermath. "I said drop it, didn't I? You don't want to know; trust me."

Her fingers shyly brushed and then cupped his knee cap. "Seifer-"

He found the core of his anger now, and punctured it with a swift blow like a point of needle edge before he could talk himself out of it. "Knock it off, Trepe. I'm not your fucking student anymore; I don't need your fucking counsel."

She pulled her fingers back; her cheeks went up in flame again, her eyes behind her glasses going sharp as knives. "You don't have to be unpleasant to everyone who wants to help you. Maybe if you'd learned how to accept help in the first place, things never would have escalated the way they did."

"Don't lecture me!" he snarled, standing up so fast he banged his shins on the coffee table. "Fuck! Goddammit."

"Seifer-"

"You don't have a fucking clue what the war was like for me, Trepe. And if I told you, you'd shit your pants. The whole fucking thing was one long nightmare; at least they can only get me now when I sleep. During the war, that's all there was; just one big fucking dream I could never wake up from. I never junctioned a GF; I always thought they were for pussies, remember? I never forgot anything like the rest of you. She was always my mother to me. And that bitch used her to-" He broke off.

He could hear himself breathing like a wounded animal.

It reverberated for a long time in the silence, a hush that sat like another person between them.

"Seifer." Quistis said softly. "Please look at me."

He ran his hand through his hair, yanking hard, looking at everything, anything that was not her.

"It wasn't Matron who did those things to you. Whatever happened, whoever she became-that wasn't the woman who raised us all as her own children. She loved us; she was trying the best way she knew how to protect us."

"Then why did she let that bitch use me? You don't even know _half _of what I fucking did-" He cut himself off and turned his back on her.

He knew why his mother had let that bitch twist and wind him up in the cords of his puppet strings that hooked into him like live wire, jerking and twitching and convulsing him with each slither of thousand watt current she fed into him.

She hadn't loved him the way she had the others.

He'd always suspected that. Not like it was any fucking surprise; he was just as much of a shit back then as he was now. For a while, she had siphoned all of her love and kindness and maternal warmth into him like that was all he needed to fix him, like it was the only fucking thing he'd been waiting his whole life for.

And maybe it was. But he'd shit on it like he had everything else that was good in his life, because it was safe and harmless and boring, and he wanted an apocalypse.

He wanted the whole fucking world to go nuclear, just so he could put it back together again with his own hands.

Not even Matron could force herself to love that.

She unfolded her miles-long coil of model's legs from underneath her, and something in his chest unlocked. He didn't even understand how she did that to him-she was just a fucking woman, and he'd never even come close to being undone by one of those before. Not until his mother, anyway.

But now here he was, desperate to step into the circle of embrace those arms loose and hanging along her sides again might offer him, if she didn't give herself any time to think about what she was doing. If she didn't really stop to consider the fact that it was Seifer Almasy she was holding, Seifer Almasy's hair she was stroking with fingers she might slide back and around to graze his cheek-

Then maybe she could stand to do it.

Maybe he should close the gap between them. It wasn't very large; he could do it in a step, in _half _a step, put them chest to chest with nothing but that thin sheath of black between them, and he could lose himself in her for a while, if she'd let him.

At least he'd be awake.

At least she'd be in his arms, and not splayed-open on a beach with his mother waltzing around her, hop scotching spirals of intestine like it was all just one big fucking childhood jump rope.

But before he could make the decision himself, before he could back off or just decide to fuck it all, Quistis took the step. Closed the gap.

And her arms were suddenly around him.

* * *

><p>Her arms came up through a slow wide curve that terminated at his waist.<p>

She wasn't even sure why they'd done that; it was as though all the limbs and thoughts and feelings that belonged to Quistis Trepe all grew minds of their own, simultaneously, and she was no longer in control of any of them.

She rested her scarred cheek against his chest, listening to his heart turn over like a groan of Diesel engine, over and over again, pushing at the fray of scar Kadowaki had not been able to fix.

It was just-

She was just so very _relieved_. He was not a monster. Scratch the surface of Seifer Almasy, and he bled, he hurt, just like the rest of the world around him, locked into a permanent struggle between heart and mind and conscience, a battle he had never seemed to need to fight.

For a long time, she was not sure if he regretted what he'd done. For a long time, she thought he might have even enjoyed it, carving away pieces of the old orphanage gang with a smile on his face; maybe, Quistis had always told herself, there was no behind-the-scenes manipulation after all. That was just what she needed to believe, to preserve her memories of a little boy who missed dinner to help her re-build the castles the ocean had ruined, and sipped imaginary tea from a chipped old porcelain mug.

The truth, she had begun to suspect, was that he enjoyed every wound inflicted and nightmare inspired, every flash of sun aureole that brought her back to his hair, shining under Deling City streetlights.

It was not until today, it was not until now, the chokehold that wondering had looped around her neck finally sloughed off for good.

The war had twisted him, but it had not bent him completely out of shape.

She lifted her head.

He was standing very carefully; she could feel it in the tense caution of the arms that had not quite lifted enough to enfold her back.

His eyes belonged to a man awaiting the final blow of executioner's axe swing.

She had to stand on her tiptoes, and stretch a long, long way up to reach his mouth.

It was the part of Quistis Trepe with a mind of its own that kissed him, and it was that part of her that noticed how very soft and warm his lips were, and the feather tickle of bang piece that grazed her forehead.

The observation leaked out into the rest of her, and she felt it pool like molten lava in her stomach.

He stood there with his lips just slightly parted, absolutely motionless like he was afraid he might scare her off if he so much as twitched.

They stayed like that for a long time, their hands and lips and pulses unmoving for that one single moment that stretched like an eternity and yet was somehow not long enough, and finally, _finally_-

He grew the confidence to touch her. His hand found her cheek with its circle of defacement, and he left it there, his fingers bleeding warmth down through the dermis layer and all the way into something inside of her that went supercritical with that heat.

She pulled away.

His nose was an inch from hers, his eyes half-shuttered and unfocused.

"I'm-I'd…better get back to bed." She had to fumble for the words, and she saw a little frown line like a wrinkle make its way through his scar.

And then she was out, she was away, and heading back toward the staircase that would take her safely up and away from something she was not ready for yet. Something she did not even fully _understand_, because she didn't, she wasn't-

She wasn't developing _feelings _for him, was she? Her old student with his feet up on his desk and that smile on his face, the one that told her this was all just one more obstacle along his road to fame-that man, that _boy_-

She couldn't possibly harbor anything more for him than the same neutral dispassion she had automatically felt for all of her students, those faceless cadet numbers that never did do anything to stand out but that she had wanted to see succeed anyway.

Quistis reached the guest room and the letter she had left folded neatly on the bedcovers, and sagged down beside it.

In the spray of lampglow that painted her face in diffused gold, she sat staring down at her hand.

It was the one she'd used to tilt his face, to angle it down for the kiss she hadn't realized she was going to give him until it was already happening, and she studied it like it no longer belonged to her.

Perhaps it didn't. That would make much more sense than the simple truth that stared back at her from the pale humps of knuckle that winked scatters of reflection from her glasses back at her.

Quistis Trepe had kissed Seifer Almasy.

It would keep her awake for a long time.

* * *

><p>He thought about going after her.<p>

It took him just a semisecond of coherent reconsideration to talk himself out of it.

Tonight she had slapped and crushed and then kissed him, and his head was still fucking spinning from it all. He didn't know what the hell might happen next; she might kill him.

She might fuck him.

He might ruin whatever fragile…_something _they had just built up between them.

So instead of following her up the staircase she nearly burned a fucking hole in the treads trying to get up fast enough, Seifer let himself fall back onto that couch, onto that boulder lump of a pillow that jabbed him like a prod of knife point, his eyes closed and his heart going like a fucking sledgehammer up against his chest.

He didn't know what the fuck had just happened, but now at least, now-

Now he had something with which to fan that spark of hope.

The grin he felt spread like the warmth in his chest hurt his whole fucking face.


	18. Chapter 16

**A/N: Angie, please don't explode-I don't have that many reviewers as it is. lol And as far as revision goes...I do embarrassingly little of it. I'm an editor's worst nightmare, I'm sure. I'm very much a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants writer, so while I do lots of re-reads to try and (hopefully) catch most of my errors, my revision is usually limited to occasionally deleting a sentence here or there, although generally I just shorten or lengthen a sentence that is already written depending on what I think will flow better. I do, however, put a ton of thought into how to bring characters to life, so I try and imagine what a real, live person would do, how they would speak, feel, etc. Anyway, I may be heading out of town for a while this weekend, depending upon whether I can get the time off work. If I do manage it, I won't have internet access for a week, so there will be another update gap. I will try and get 17 out on Friday if I have the time, but I can't promise that. I hope you guys are still enjoying this.**

**Chapter Sixteen**

Presidential Palace

Esthar

2 Weeks Later

He faced his father across the titanic sprawl of paper-cluttered desk between them.

His hands formed a convulsive knot of sweat-smeared palm at his back, because he did not trust them not to shake, and he wouldn't show any weakness in front of this man.

He couldn't.

Laguna Loire was bumbling and weak and useless enough for the both of them, and resentment like stovetop boil-over splashed the back of his throat.

"Sign here?" Esthar's president asked, indicating a line on the sheet of paper he held up with the tip of the pen he clutched like he was trying to break it, and Squall kept his eyes carefully focused on the wall over Loire's shoulder, so he did not have to look at him.

"Yes, sir."

He could see Laguna blanch, a reaction like a ripple of shiver that rolled through his fingers and up his arms and into his eyes, where it stayed in a pathetic little knot of grief like that one that tied itself around Squall's heart.

Ellone, standing beside him, set her hand down in a crosshold of steadying reassurance across his shoulder, and the look she shot Squall was the coldest he had ever seen her give. It was not saying much, but something quailed, something _curdled _inside of him anyway, and he tightened his fingers, winched down his palms, until they were pressed up against one another like dogs at each other's throats, trying to rip through to the other side.

Behind him, three of Garden's best fanned out in a loose arc; Seifer, standing with his arms crossed looking bored, Quistis beside him in a calm at-ease that Squall could not have imitated right now if his life depended on it, and Zell to her left, scratching his ass.

Across from them all, separated out just the way he seemed to prefer these days, Irvine sprawled on Laguna's couch, his hat pulled down over his face like he had dozed off right in the middle of the office.

Ellone handed the contract back to him with another pointed look that he ignored. Laguna capped his pen, smiling bleakly and trying to contort it into something that looked real, and Squall accepted the sheet of paper carefully, picking his fingers up out of the way so that he didn't accidentally brush his father's hand for even a moment.

Laguna cleared his throat. "It's, uh, very late. We have plenty of open rooms. Maybe you could-"

"No thank you, sir. I'm very busy. I need to get back to Garden right away."

Laguna's face fell so fast and hard Squall thought he might have to watch it splatter against his desk. "Of course. I'm sure." He was staring down at his pen now, rolling it back and forth and back and forth between his fingers. "How's Rinoa? Is she doing all right?"

_She's going to make you a grandfather. Not that I'd ever tell you that. _

"The contract stipulates that SeeD will only remain in your service until permanent replacements can be found for your security force." He let the implication go hard as steel in his voice: and then we're going to have nothing else to do with you.

Ellone frowned. "Squall-"

"Ellone." Laguna interrupted quietly, like a father stepping between squabbling siblings, and Squall's throat closed over like someone had him in the knot of their fist, and his heart cracked and split and bled anger all over the rest of him. Ellone had had him for years, but this man had _never _been anything more than an abstract hole inside him, a gaping wound in his life where there was supposed to be a father, where there was supposed to be a parent who gave enough of a _shit _about him to come looking for him, to not allow him to wind up alone and unwanted in a home full of strangers who took him in because they had to.

He let nuclear fury seep into his voice. He held up the contract. "This is all I need from you." He didn't have to add the rest; Laguna could hear it in his voice, see it in his eyes, and his gaze went bright with pain that stabbed him like a thrust of knife edge.

It caught both father and son in its first ripping blow, and his damn hands, peeled apart now, shook like the wriggle of quiver that crawled its way into his voice.

_This is all I will _ever _need from you. _

Irvine slid his hat up.

Squall executed an abrupt about-face that took him past a startled Quistis and an impervious Seifer, his boot heels clicking on the floor.

Laguna followed him out into the hall; he didn't even realize it until he reached the first bend in the y junction of gleaming floor tile that branched off in two separate directions, and a hand flashed out in a grab that stopped his arm mid-swing. "Squall, please." he said quietly.

There was so much naked longing in his voice, it made Squall hate him even more. He did not _get _to sound like that, like each rigidly formal response that was all Squall would give him was a hammer that broke his heart a little more with each overhand of swing. He was not _allowed to _let his voice shake like that, like he even gave a shit about this son he had left alone on a beach to wonder why his parents had not loved him enough to keep him.

Who the hell-who the _fuck _did Laguna Loire think he was?

He shook his father off angrily, and kept going.

* * *

><p>Laguna watched his son walk away from him, the hand he had used to try and make him stay dangling open and empty and nerveless against his side.<p>

That retreating back ripped a hole through him like his first sight of Raine's grave, a long time ago.

Oh Hyne, _Raine_-

He missed her so damn much. That boy, that proudly upright _man _who had made something of himself without any help at all from his absentee father-that was Raine's son, all the best parts of her strung together into something admirable and stubborn and heroic, something that would never be a part of Laguna Loire's life just as she would never again be a bright smile beside him in his bed.

Behind him, he heard the door to his office click shut.

He turned with his hands in his pockets and a lump in his throat, and there were Quistis and Ellone standing there in front of him now, their pretty little faces bright with concern and the love he would never get from his son, and it made the lump go hard, made it go tight against the back of his tongue, and now he had to swallow carefully around it.

He constructed a smile that hurt his lips, assembling it piece by piece until he thought it might resemble something authentic.

"Uncle Laguna?"

"It's fine." He had to squeeze the lie out between his teeth, and he could tell that neither of them believed it.

Ellone stepped forward into his arms. Her body became a soft warm curve against the front of him, and he smelled a faint hint of coconut like a curl of tropical breeze surge up from the head she tucked against his chest.

It was the same perfume Raine used to wear; he had bought it for Ellone's twenty-fifth birthday, after searching and scouring and cajoling out-of-stock shop owners, and she had exclaimed over it like he'd just bought her a shiny new luxury car.

He'd had to stand with it in his hand for a long, long time before giving it to her, like all his joints had locked up and stopped working like time-frozen machine pistons, his world a twirl of kaleidoscope that showed him soft blue eyes, the same color as his son's.

And just like that, in a moment, a half second, he felt tears scald his eyes.

He had to bury his face in Ellone's hair to hide them.

* * *

><p>The first thing any martial artist learns is how to make a fist.<p>

Curl in the pinky, let the rest of the fingers fall in behind like the coordinated tumbles of Dominoe stacks. Thumb slides in across the knuckles, just above the uppermost finger joint. Winch the pinky down tight as it will go. Too loose, and you'll break your whole hand. Strike with the wrong part of the fist, same thing. You lead with the first two knuckles, let them snap around into a point of chin or droop of soft cartilage with a follow-through of hip thrust that puts your whole body weight behind the hit.

He sat staring down at this perfect fist, coiling and uncoiling it, watching his fingers flicker like darts of sleight-of-hand card trick; now you see them, now you don't.

He balled it up one final time, and smacked it into his other palm. "Man, I'm bored."

Sitting across from him on the other side of the Palace's spacious library, Quistis lifted her head from her book. "That's a _good _thing, Zell. It means no one is trying to kill Laguna. And we have only been here two days."

"Yeah, I know; I'm just tired of all this sittin' around, you know? I got all this energy and there's nowhere to put it. I don't get why we have to sit around on our asses all day and wait for Laguna's security team to give us assignments. We spend more time with our thumbs up our butts than anything." He began to shadow box his way around the table between them, his shoes squeaking on the floor.

"They don't want SeeDs encroaching on their territory. Especially ones from a facility they probably consider indirectly responsible for an assassination attempt on their president."

"Still annoying."

From beneath a drape of newspaper covering his whole head, an animal snarl of voice he'd recognize anywhere: "Shut your face, Wuss. I'm trying to take a fuckin' nap. If you're so damn bored, I hear the view from the top of this place is nice this time of the year. Jump off the roof and see if you can figure out how to fly before you hit bottom. That should keep you busy. For a little while."

"Want to come with me?" Zell sneered. He picked up a lone pencil from the table in front of him. It cut through the air with a whistle like incoming artillery, and smacked Quistis squarely across the arch of nosepiece between her eyes. "Oh, shit!"

Seifer's paper rustled as it slid down from his face.

Quistis did not look pleased.

"Sorry, Quisty; I was aimin' for Almasy."

"No wonder you can't get laid; you'd probably fumble your dick into the chick's ear." Seifer observed sagely, folding his paper but not taking his feet down off the table.

Zell flipped him off.

Quistis sighed and lowered her book again. "Please don't start." She sounded tired, and he felt a pang of regret like a sternum blow; her eyes behind her glasses were ringed in fringes of heliotrope deep as faint bruise, and she was rubbing her temples now like they hurt her. "You feelin' ok, Quisty?"

"Fine, Zell. Just tired."

He tilted his head and squinted suspiciously at the two of them, Seifer with his hands behind his head now and his eyes closed, a subtle little curl of smirk on his lips. "Hey! Quisty, you're not screwing him, are you?"

"Excuse me?" She knocked her book off the table, her cheeks flushing.

"That why you're so tired? Are you guys…?" He made a crude gesture with his hands.

"_No_!"

"If she was fucking me, she'd just look happy all the time." Seifer commented without opening his eyes. "You wouldn't know about that. The woman who pops your cherry will probably kill herself afterward. I would."

Zell hunted down another writing utensil, and threw this one at him too.

It too hit Quistis.

"Zell!"

"Fuck, Chicken Wuss-could you even hit the side of that wall with your big ugly face?" He peeled both eyes open and hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the expanse of cream-painted wall spread out behind him.

"I could hit it with _your _face." Zell offered.

Seifer smiled, and Zell had to remind himself sharply that the asshole was just baiting him again. Maybe they were sort of friends-hell if he knew for sure just _what _exactly they were; Seifer Almasy wasn't very good at making or keeping friends, so this tentative camaraderie that had sprung up between them was probably all just one big stumble through the dark for him-but the guy could still be a raging dickhead.

"I'm going to check on Irvine." Quistis said, rising with her book in hand.

He waited until she left before he spoke again, resuming his drills in fast-paced counts of ten. "So, you gettin' anywhere with her?"

Seifer frowned and scratched the back of his neck. "I thought I was, and then she turns around and fucking ignores me for two weeks."

"Thought you were how?"

"None of your damn business."

"When you guys dropped Rinoa off?"

Seifer sat forward with his elbows on his knees, glaring. "If you tell Quistis I let it slip to you about Rinoa, I'll fuckin' kill you."

"Relax, _dude_." Zell waved his threat off. "It's not like I know where she is. And I'm still hurt Squall didn't think he could tell me and Kinneas what was going on. I mean, I help him out that one time Angelo got sick by not telling Rinoa that Squall fed her the admission forms of this one retard who couldn't hack it at Garden in a million years but his father kept pushing it anyway because he had money, and what kind of thanks do I get?"

"Pubes thought it was best if as few people as possible knew what was going on. Especially people with your fucking mouth."

"Hey!" Zell protested. "I've kept your sissy little crush on Quisty a secret, haven't I?"

Seifer gave him a look like a knife edge of sword through his guts.

"You gonna' ask her out or anything?"

"Why the hell would I do that?"

"Gee, I dunno. Seems like a popular thing to do when you've got a thing for a woman."

"That's only when the woman isn't a rank A mercenary who could pull your balls off with a little flick of her wrist."

Zell side-stepped an imaginary opponent, cracked a flick of backfist through the air that rebounded his glove back against his palm with a snap like whip leather, and came up grinning. "So you're afraid of Quisty."

"_No_."

"Kinda' sounds like you're afraid of her."

"I'm not fucking _afraid _of her."

"Then ask her out."

"She'll just say no."

"So would you say that you're _afraid _of rejection then?"

"I'm not afraid of anything, you stupid little Chicken Wuss!" he snapped, his hands going into fists on the tops of his thighs, the tendons in his forearms standing out like braids of cable.

Probably not smart to taunt him like that; Seifer could pull his head off with one good yank if he wanted to. If he could catch him.

Zell used a chair as his springboard, a smooth arch of flip that took him into a neat smack of landing on the other side, his knees taking the impact with a slight flex that put him up onto the balls of his feet and into a blur of jab series. "Just sayin'."

"Where the hell would I even take her?"

"Dunno, man. That's up for you to figure out. You could take her up the road to that one place-you know the one with the pictures of all the chicks on the windows? The ones that are blacked out?"

"You mean the porn store?" Seifer replied sourly.

Zell snickered. "Yeah. It's not like she's going to enjoy being on a date with you anyway. Might as well get some enjoyment out of it for yourself, huh?"

"Shut the fuck up."

Zell let his breath slide out in a hiss of fighter's exhale, a short little huff of a gasp that contracted his diaphragm, hard. He chambered for a thrust of brief right cross, let it fly and pulled it back. "So you gonna' do it?"

"Maybe." He would; Zell could see it in his eyes, in the rising flame that is a constant banked glow of ember inside any proud man, waiting to be fanned. Zell had essentially dared him, and now in Seifer's mind if he backed down he was a coward, was exactly what Zell had implied: afraid of Quistis Trepe, terrified of a mere woman not even half his size, and they would both know it. Voice anything like a dare, and men like Seifer Almasy would take it, always.

"I'll talk ya' up to her."

"Tch. Why don't I just slap her in the face with my dick and tell her to get me a beer? That would probably come across better than anything _you'd _have to say."

"I'll do a good job, swear to Hyne."

"Yeah fucking right, Dincht. What could you possibly have to say about me that's good?"

Zell shrugged, and relaxed out of his fighting stance. "You love her. So you've got at least one redeeming quality, huh?"

"Tch." Seifer looked away.

Through the window at his back, the diffused bloodlight of sunset spilled across his shoulders. Zell looked at it in disgust. "Let's go do a perimeter check or somethin'; I'm tired of waiting around."

Seifer stood up, dwarfing the glow coming through in blind slits of emaciated red. "Yeah, whatever." He cracked his knuckles.

Zell guffawed. "Now you're startin' to sound like Squall."

"Fuck you."

* * *

><p>He was staring down at his stacks and mounds of paperwork, but that was not what he was seeing.<p>

A fray of jaw skin open like a smile around a knob of red-smeared bone-

The sewer shit reek of terror-emptied bowels-

And Seifer Almasy's face, impassive through it all. His lip curl of this-is-beneath-me sneer, like peeling strips of chin flesh from Joss Malcolm's face with that moonlit wink of knife blade in his hand was boring him, like it was all just one more way to spend his afternoon.

Squall had almost believed him. His hands and his eyes and his voice-they'd all taken on that mannequin detachment he'd watched seal up his rival's face from that wall above Seifer Almasy's head, frightening blankness that he could still see sometimes at night when he was trying to sleep.

Joss was a maggot. He was shit, he was _nothing_; just the mere sight of him had curdled Squall's heart in his chest, and yet still-

He would never have been able to do what Seifer had. He had wanted to vomit just watching it, just standing in the shadows cringing back from the curlicue of crimson-painted skin ribbons flecked in yellow-butter globules of subcutaneous fat.

But Seifer-

Seifer had treated it all like it was just another training exercise, just one more barrier he had to hurtle on his path to SeeD.

It was not until later, it was not until _after_, that the mask came off, and underneath there was only a very pale, very shaky young man with his hands in fists at his sides and his face contorted like something hurt him. Like something was gnawing away at him from the inside out, devouring him like cancer.

He wondered what Rinoa would think, if she knew the lengths he had gone to, if she knew the depths he had made other people sink to just to keep her safe.

His headache pounded like a drumroll behind his eyes. He couldn't think about her. He had to keep her separate, had to keep her out of this office that was his retreat, this safe haven where he had only his work and not the endless march of wondering and worrying and panicking that thumped in perfect lockstep unison inside his head.

Squall knuckled sleep out of his eyes. The words on the page in front of him were swimming again.

Joss Malcolm's mutilated face became Laguna's, almost as disfigured by grief.

_No_.

Laguna Loire's grief was a farce; political maneuvering like everything else in his glycerine sheen of professionally bleached politician's smile and the bumbling idiot's veneer he used to keep fooling the public.

Squall rubbed his scar. No; that at least was real. Ellone had sent him all the way back into Laguna's distant soldier's past, and he'd been just as much of a moron back then.

Someone tapped at his door. "Yeah?"

A cadet poked her head cautiously in, looking frightened. "Uh, sir?"

"Yeah?"

"Um, Instructor Trepe's replacement just got eaten by a T-Rex in the training center."

Squall sighed. He'd _known _that idiot wasn't competent enough to handle doing his own laundry let alone training children how to kill better than anyone else in the world, hadn't he? He never did understand why Cid had hired him.

He was running out of instructors. "Fine." he said tiredly. "Get Kadowaki in there; I'll put someone else on Instructor Trepe's class."

"Yes, sir." The door clicked shut.

He felt old when they called him that. He wasn't yet twenty, for Hyne's sake, and these students, these SeeDs-in-training that were not much younger than he was, looked at him like he was some kind of messiah. Like the entire universe was some unanswerable question, some unsolvable puzzle, and yet somehow, inexplicably, Squall Leonhart was that answer, was that solution.

It was too much pressure. Too much _responsibility._ He had never wanted this kind of power; that had always been Seifer's dream. All Squall had ever really wanted, all he had ever really needed, was to be left the hell alone.

He squinted down at the pen in his hand, the one still poised over the page underneath his hand like he was just moments, just seconds away from completing his work, trying not to remember that it was one Selphie had given him.

Someone else knocked on his door.

He sighed again. Another head poked in. "Sir?"

"Yeah?"

And thus was his whole damned life, lately.

* * *

><p>Esthar's nightscape spread out like a galaxy before him. The lights were distant smudges of star twinkle, the constant buzz of city lifestream that went on below him the hushed murmur of other life forms Selphie had always tried to convince him had to be out there, somewhere beyond their little corner of universe.<p>

Beautiful city. He wished he'd had time to bring her here.

A hole like dry-rot chewed away at his stomach. He was never going to stop feeling it, never going to be _free _of this grief that coiled like an adder and stabbed like a blade, center-piercing him through the heart he had to keep coaxing along, because it was what she would want him to do.

It was what she would expect of him, to keep going and living and laughing, even after everything had become a hollow echo, shadowy ghost image of the life he used to have. The semi-transluceny of this endless purgatory he had to wade through showed him spectral afterimages of her smile like smears of Time Compression, and together they all formed the chisel that slowly, one sliver at a time, picked away at Irvine Kinneas.

Pretty soon, there was going to be nothing left of him.

His sigh fluttered the ribbon of hair he hadn't bothered to tuck behind his ear.

The window sill beneath his hands was so coolly comforting, he wanted to lay his cheek down against it, wanted to slap his still-beating heart down onto it like it could soothe this burning in his chest.

But there was nothing that could do that, not anymore, so he just stood there looking out his window, leaning his elbows on that sill with his chin in his hands and his hat sliding down into his eyes.

The quiet knock that just barely rattled his door in its frame did not even stir him.

"Door's open." he called over his shoulder.

He didn't look to see who stepped inside, and a moment later, out of the corner of one eye, he could see a flash of blonde like the sun that had disappeared almost an hour ago, vanishing like nuclear white-out above the city.

Quistis smiled but said nothing.

She never did. From everyone else, there was always a barrage of questions, of endless inquiries that just hurt him more: 'how are you doing,' 'can I do anything for you,' 'how you holding up, Kinneas' on and on and on, well-meaning but completely unhelpful.

Publicly, his answer was always 'just fine,' a twitch of smile and hat tip that put the asker at ease, relieved them of the duty they kept feeling obligated to fulfill ever since the funeral.

Privately, he still wanted to die sometimes.

Maybe it was this that Quistis sensed, this raw wound inside of him that was not ready to be prodded yet, that was only ripped wide and left flapping all over again by questions he was not ready to think about.

Because she only stood there. Because she just slid her hand quietly over his, and side slipped him a little curl of gentle smile that told him she understood all of this.

He pushed his fingers down through hers.

There was nothing romantic in this easing pressure the touch of her hand brought him; he was not sure anything would ever be like that for him again. Not for a long, long time, anyway. But her hand was nice, it was warm, and so he stood there with it in his for a long time, neither saying anything, watching the moving dots of stars that were the tail lights of public transit systems far below them.

"So. What's goin' on with you and Almasy?" Irvine asked, very casually.

He saw her blanch out of the corner of his eye, her fingers going rigid in his. "Why would you ask that?"

It was his turn to flash that same knowing, gentle smile. "Quisty, I'm just grievin'. I ain't blind."

A faint finger's breadth of red had crept into the soft arch of her profile. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Course you do, Quisty. He looks at you the way Squall looks at Rinoa. Or the way-" He broke off, because pain like an open curve of palm had somehow gotten inside of him, and closed around a fistful of guts. He could feel it tugging at them, trying to unravel everything, attempting to pull him all to pieces, right in front of her. His smile stuttered and flickered and stalled, and he had to take a deep breath before continuing softly. "The way I know I used to look at Selphie."

She took a long time in replying. "Seifer and I…there's nothing there."

"Really?" He let his disbelief leak through into the question.

She sighed and seemed to deflate, just a little. "I don't know. I'm very confused. I'm starting to think…he might not be the man I thought he was."

"He's an asshole."

"I'm not going to dispute that. But…he's also…" She paused, and he saw her eyes go daydream distant, taking on a cast like fog. "I always used to think that he didn't care about what he did. That, maybe, he even liked it. But I've found out recently, that isn't true. I think…he may have suffered more than any of us." She smiled again, and looked down. "And he's occasionally…sweet."

"_Almasy_?"

"Exactly my reaction." Quistis replied dryly. "There was this old book in the library back at Garden that I found not long after I first arrived there. It was a poetry anthology, and it had some of the poems Matron used to read us in it. A lot of them reminded me of my time back at the orphanage, which I hadn't yet forgotten, and I used to sit there for hours reading it, memorizing it. I picked it up in front of him once; he spent the entire time reading small passages out of it and making fun of me. And then, all of a sudden, it disappeared. And I started receiving anonymous e-mails consisting of poems from that book and nothing else."

"Uh, yeah. Dincht told me about that." Irvine said, scratching at the back of his neck, fumbling through his ponytail to the skin underneath and trying not to smile.

"I started instant messaging with the man sending them eventually. This went on for a while; it turned out it was Seifer all along. And do you know what he told me when I asked why he had done it?" She had not brought her gaze around to his for the entire conversation, and finally, she did so now, a tiny frown wrinkling up the uncreased skin between her eyebrows. "He said he wanted me to be happy."

"Thought Almasy didn't want anyone but himself to be happy."

"Me too." She sighed again, and her body formed a long slow arc of slump that brought her elbows up onto the sill and her chin down onto her hands, the warmth of her palm leaving his. "I don't know what to think anymore."

He gripped the sill with both hands again, looking out over the city. "I'm not gonna' lie to you, Quisty; I don't trust that guy. I don't know what happened to him behind the scenes during the war, but I was there for what he actually did, and that's what I remember. An' I don't know how much of it was him, and how much of it was her, but I remember what he was like as a kid. He wanted the whole world at his feet even then; he always used to tell us how famous he was going to be, how he was gonna' save everyone-but he never seemed to want to do it because savin' people was the right thing to do, y'know? It always seemed to me like he just wanted to do it so people would know who he was. Wanted his name in lights an' all that jazz. Almasy's never cared about anyone but himself and what people can do for him. But it doesn't matter what I think. And I ain't lyin' about the way he looks at you." He met her eyes in the night-painted square of window glass before them, a hazy ghost of Irvine Kinneas and of Quistis Trepe staring back at him from that one-way mirror of star-flecked reflection. In that smear of gunmetal gray where black-bruised sky met the spray of lamplight from his room, all the flaws of grief and fatigue and soldier's life did not exist, were wiped away, and there were just two faces like pretty models' profiles staring back at him. In that glass, they did not look like SeeDs, like killers, and he could almost pretend, for just a moment, that they were just two friends sharing a quiet moment of companionship. That one day he would not try to hold her guts in with his hands while another rainfall of shrapnel arched and torqued and tore her body into shreds of butcher's meat beneath his fingers, that one day, she would not crouch beside him in the shit and piss and vomit of their comrades, and try to fix his caved-in skull with a flash of Curaga like a jolt of electrical voltage.

"How do you feel about him?" Irvine asked her softly. "That's the only thing that matters, Quistis."

She shook her head, eyes narrowed thoughtfully behind her glasses. "I don't know. I don't love him, certainly. But I don't…I don't hate him either. For a long time, as his instructor, it was all I could do _not _to-he was so frustrating; there was so much potential there, and he always just wasted it and did whatever he wanted to, and nothing I ever said would get through to him. I started to resent him. I tried so hard not to, because he was my student, and I was supposed to be bettering him, not plotting petty revenge against him." Her lips twitched, just a little. "And then the war happened and I let him slip completely through my fingers. Maybe if I'd been a better instructor…" She trailed off, shaking her head. "I don't know. I blamed myself for everything that happened with him for a very long time, but I honestly don't know if anything I ever did or said or tried could have stopped him. Maybe if I'd paid less attention to Squall and more to him…but that might not have helped, either. Seifer always did just what he wanted to, even as a child."

"I always used to wonder how Matron could love him so much when he was such a little ass."

"She loved us all." Quistis said softly. "She didn't care about our faults, or whether we stole cookies or didn't go to bed on time or snuck out in the middle of the night to set off miniature explosions in her backyard. She just loved us all, unconditionally. Even Seifer." He watched one of her hands slide up in that square of smoked mirror glass, slipping beneath the edge of her glasses to rub sleep from her eyes. "I used to think he was so selfish that he didn't care, that he stomped her flowers and broke her vases and purposefully did something she'd just gently reminded him a moment ago not to because that was just what he did with any kindness anyone ever showed him; threw it in their face because he'd already decided he didn't need anything like that. And then I saw him at her execution. And I think now that perhaps…perhaps he did it because he wanted her attention. Because he wanted her to love him more than the rest of us. Maybe he needed it more. He's never had many friends. That has to be lonely, after a while."

"Almasy brings that on himself, by bein' such a dick."

"Yes, he does. But still." She huffed out another little sigh, and tipped her eyes to meet his again, with that kind wisp of a smile she had been bestowing on them all ever since they were children, that I-will-fix-it quirk of the mouth she had perfected, even as a bossy five-year-old. "Aren't you tired of me talking about myself?"

Irvine flashed his lady-killer grin, and for just a moment, for just a lightning heat quiver of a second, he felt like himself again.

He flicked his hat brim to tilt it up and away out of his eyes, and used that cleared field of vision now to scan her appreciatively. "Darlin', you can talk about yourself long as you want to, long as you stand there bent over like that."

Quistis shook her head at him, but she was smiling.

He let his voice go serious again, let it sag heavily, and now he settled both elbows back down on that wide-angled curve of cold window sill, his arm resting companionably up against hers. "All I know, Quisty, is if there's somethin' there, if you got feelings for the man, don't listen to me. Almasy can be a real nasty prick, but I don't know everything. You're one of the smartest people I know. You think there's something else there, then I know there has to be. Don't waste it, Quistis." His voice scraped his throat like sandpaper now, burning the way his chest suddenly did. "We've only got so long on this world, you know? You can't take anything for granted. You, Almasy-maybe tomorrow one of you won't be here anymore. Maybe the day after that you'll both be gone. We're mercenaries, Quisty. None of us is lookin' at a nice long life fizzlin' out quietly on a porch swing somewhere when we're old and gray."

She did not look at him, and she did not reply, but her hand slid back over his, closing like a loose knot of fist over his knuckles.

They stood like that for a long time together.

* * *

><p>Esthar truly came to life at night, when the sun had dwindled to nothing more than a ragged smear of lurid red on the horizon. This was when the horde of underage drinking crowd that was the portion of minor population not rich or influential enough to score believable fake ID's descended on the clubs and restaurants and indiscriminatory bars that just might possibly deign to sell them something more hardcore than the soda or flavored mineral water they would be endlessly mocked for settling for. The streets jammed with transit buses over spilling with teenage girls dressed not dissimilar from the women waiting patiently on street corners, and with crowded private vehicles carpooling home from late office hours. The sidewalks became an endless river flow of chattering, jostling humanity, all heading toward the unified goal of blowing off steam that they would each achieve in their own way.<p>

But even now, barely an hour after sunrise, the city still had a rushed, alive feel to it like the turbocharged vibration of an accelerated heartbeat. Esthar pulsed and rippled and throbbed with activity, a surge like an incoming tide that threatened to drown them.

Quistis had to keep her head down and the collar of the long coat Ellone had let her borrow flipped up around her neck, her boots tapping out a brisk rhythm across the pavement. They clicked in time to the erratic roll of thunder that was her heart, pounding in her ears and up against her sternum.

She was remembering what had happened the last time she had taken to these streets.

Beside her, Seifer had one hand like a clamp down across her elbow, like she was a child that might get lost in the crowd.

There had been no disguising his height; he towered above most of the citizens scurrying around them, and he had refused to have his scar coated in the artful blend of makeup and synthetic skin that would turn his forehead into the smooth unbroken brow of a stranger. A part of her suspected he was counting on that scar to keep them out of trouble, that notorious slash mark of mutilation that had become a symbol of danger like a hood flare of cobra strike. He was at least as feared as he was hated, after all.

His only concession to the fact that they needed to be discreet was a black stocking cap riding low on his forehead, and the nondescript black trench coat he had exchanged for his old one, and wore now over Hyperion.

When Laguna had asked her to check in on Dr. Odine about the Palace's computer system, which had gone down early in the morning and had yet to recommence working, he had hit her with his stipulation immediately: she was not to go anywhere alone. He'd offered one of his most hulking personal bodyguards, who had not looked pleased about the assignment, and Seifer, inside Laguna's office for reasons still unknown to her, had immediately volunteered himself instead. Well, 'volunteer' was a polite euphemism for what he had actually said, which had been less a request and more a rude-toned demand that Laguna barely even batted an eye at.

While he was enduring a lecture from Esthar's president on all the many and horrible things that would happen to him should he let any harm come to Quistis, she had slipped quietly out the door to see about borrowing one of the vehicles from the Palace's extensive garage.

She had been coldly informed they were all undergoing maintenance.

She had sighed but not tattled, and she had not told Seifer, who would have made them accommodate her, one way or another.

Part of her didn't blame them for their hostility; Laguna's bumbling awkwardness made him beloved, and so far as most of his security force and personal aids were concerned, B. Garden had gotten him into this entire mess. A couple of SeeD deaths would not keep them awake at night.

And so they had set out on foot, power-walking the short two city blocks between the Palace and Odine's laboratory, Seifer a silent looming shadow at her back, his fingers warm and tight and just faintly, slightly damp against her skin where she had rolled the sleeves of Ellone's coat up past her elbows. Freeing her wrists gave her better mobility with her weapon, and she had wanted any advantage they could possibly manage; it had taken some time, but she had even talked Seifer-who was by and far a physical fighter and not much of a magic user-to stock several defensive and offensive spells, seeing as how she was now useless in that aspect.

She was not taking any chances.

Quistis angled herself sideways across the flow of traffic bustling the opposite way, wedging herself into the first little pocket of space she could find and cutting through a side alley, listening with a smile on her face to Seifer cuss loudly as he lost his grip on her and had to break into a jog to keep up.

"Trepe!" he hissed. His fingers snapped shut around her arm again.

She sighed. "Seifer, I'm a grown woman. I've spent the last eleven years of my life learning approximately twelve different ways to kill a man with my bare hands without leaving a mark on him. I'm confident I can walk down a street without being led around like a small child."

He didn't let go. "Never know. Might be Trepies lurking."

The flicker of brief smile she caught out of the corner of one eye was gone as quickly as it touched down across his lips.

She recalled what they felt like against her own, and flushed.

Odine's lab was a snarl of spire that glinted like bottle glass against the backdrop of dawn-tinted skyline it reached for; Quistis stepped inside with a brief little twitch of shudder in the climate-controlled entryway, and noticed Seifer still had his hand around her arm. It had loosened as they walked in off the street, more a caress now than anything resembling an escort's careful grip.

She looked at it, and then up at him.

He didn't say anything, but he didn't let go either.

"Dr. Odine?" Quistis called out, stepping onto the little carpet-hidden pressure plate that activated the main door; it opened with a reptilian hiss, and she preceded Seifer into the main laboratory.

She could see the frown that pulled at his scar tissue, and now his hand began to tighten again, pulling her up against his side as his other hand found and slid open and loose and waiting around Hyperion.

Two young men walked out to meet them, dressed in the black and silver of G. Garden cadets.

"The lab's closed." This was the short-clipped explanation they got from the unsmiling cadet on the left, and nothing else. His companion said nothing, but his hand where it rested on the butt of his weapon was absolutely steady, unruffled as the stone cold gravity of his soldier's eyes.

"We just need to speak with Dr. Odine for a moment."

"Lab's closed."

Seifer coiled like a predator tensing for its leap, and Quistis laid a hand lightly down across his forearm. He shook her off so she stepped in front of him, putting her body between him and both cadets before he could do something stupid and get himself killed.

She wasn't watching them splatter him all over the walls because he couldn't control his damned temper.

"Will he be available later?" Quistis asked calmly.

"No."

"Is there any way you could take a message to him for us? The lab's phone lines are down."

"Off the hook. Dr. Odine doesn't want to be disturbed."

"Look, you little fuc-"

"All right. Thank you." she interrupted mildly, reaching behind her without taking her eyes off either of them. She was fumbling for his arm, but what she found instead was his hand, large and thick and rough with knurls of fighter's callus and bumps of scar tissue like fractal branches of elevated lifeline.

He was glaring at her when they emerged back into the teem of passersby. "The hell did you do that for? I could have taken those little assholes."

"Not before one of them put a bullet in your head."

Seifer sneered at her. "Like you'd give a shit about that, Trepe."

She frowned at him and pulled her hand out of his. "Seifer, something very strange is going on there; why would Odine have cadets from Galbadia Garden guarding his lab? That doesn't make any sense."

"Well, if you'd let me knock the little fuckers on their asses, we could have found out."

"Yes; after I cleaned pieces of you off the walls. It wasn't worth pushing, and besides, there could have been more in the back where Odine must have been. What would you have done then, if you did somehow manage to get past the first two?"

He shrugged. "Beaten them too."

It was that simple for him. Seifer Almasy did not think in terms of consequences; obstacles were merely things to be shouldered aside, to be slashed in half and stepped right through like they didn't matter. They did not triumph in his world, ever, because he was faster and stronger and better than anything he would ever encounter.

Except a sorceress' will. Except a puppet master with his mother's face, bending him like cheap plastic beneath her, malleable as sculptor's clay, pounded into whatever shape she required him to be.

They began their return in silence, but she could see him through that sliver of peripheral vision again, glancing over and then away from her.

* * *

><p>He tried to clear his throat.<p>

It flexed and convulsed and would not work quite right, and Seifer wondered when the fuck he had become such a pansy.

What, he couldn't ask a woman on a goddamned date now? He was getting to be as chickenshit as Wuss.

Out of the corner of his eye, she was a half-moon curve of profile; sweep of dark lash line and thoughtful purse of subtly red-glossed lips, their shape against his own mouth a pleasant little quiver of warmth somewhere down low in his gut. It was a memory that had to swim, to thrash through gloom that tried to threaten and devour and overwhelm it, and yet somehow it persisted.

Somehow, it was starting to take the place of his mother's lips. Somehow that one single moment of touch, of brief contact that he wasn't even sure had meant a whole hell of a lot to her-somehow, when he called it to the forefront of his mind, lying in a pool of nightmare-twisted sheets and his own sweat, Seifer slowly, slowly felt his mother begin to retreat, to simply go away because there was no longer enough room for her.

Because there wasn't much room for anything that wasn't Quistis Trepe these days, and even his mother's sibilant presence, and the shadows that reminded him about boy Seifer and all his dreams, all the ambitions he promised himself he would achieve one day no matter what-

They were no longer the most important things in his life.

Her smile had crowded them out.

He scowled at himself again. When had he grown a fucking vagina? That queer cowboy was going to wind up more manly than him if he wasn't careful with his thoughts.

She swung her arms in short little arcs that brushed them up against his, and Seifer made a grab for her hand as it curved back toward him, coming up with his fingers around it.

Quistis stiffened and looked over at him.

He twisted his lips into something that felt like a smile, but he was too goddamned nervous to hold onto it, and he let it slide off his mouth the second she looked away.

Her fingers became rigid inside his, but she did not pull them out of the tangle he had made of their hands.

"What are you doing tonight?" he barked. _Get a fucking grip, Almasy. _

"Making sure no one kills Laguna." Quistis replied wryly. "I believe that was what we were hired for, if you remember."

"Tch. Loire hired us so he could have an excuse to talk to Pubes."

"Even so, it doesn't give us permission to slack off."

Some fatass clutching his briefcase like it was his girlfriend's tits crashed into Quistis, and Seifer glowered at him until his apology became a strangled squeak inside that quivering second-chin roll of flab drooping like wattles down around his throat.

"Seifer."

"What?"

"Keep your face down. Don't scowl at everyone who offends you simply by existing."

"Are you telling me you wanted that sweaty pig touching you?"

"I'm telling you I'd like us to reach the Palace intact, instead of getting torn to pieces by an angry anti-SeeD mob. That means not calling any unnecessary attention to ourselves."

"Don't worry, Instructor; if you're scared, I'll make sure to protect you."

"Against an entire mob of angry anti-sorceress protestors? You're very confident in your skills."

"I don't make empty boasts, Instructor; you know that. By the way, I'm above average in a lot of things beside my expertise with a gun blade." He smirked at her; Quistis rolled her eyes.

It was encouraging that he could still make dick jokes with his heart crammed into his throat, though, y'know, that probably wasn't the best fucking segue into broaching a conversation about all the different reasons why she should go out with him. Unless a seven-inch penis was at the top of her list of requirements, which he doubted; Squall was probably swinging three inches at full mast, and she'd mooned over him for fuck knew how long.

His hope tasted like ash in his mouth; he could see her staring strangely at him, and for one excruciatingly brief, fuck-it-all moment, he just wanted to tell her everything, spill his guts like someone had gotten the tip of Hyperion into him and ripped everything wide. He'd already tried to and it hadn't worked very well, but he'd been a little drunk, then; this time he would do it right, tell her properly-

Tell her fucking what, exactly? That an emotional cripple loved her as best as his stained, disfigured little heart was able? That he knew he wasn't good enough for her but it didn't matter because he wanted her anyway and what Seifer Almasy wanted he got, or else?

"Seifer?" Quistis prompted.

He was a fucking moron. He had stopped in the middle of the street, tourists and hurrying businessman detouring around them like boulder-split river, their linked hands between them in a knot he couldn't look away from.

Her fingers were pale and long and delicate against the thicker bands of his own, wrapped in scar and the phantom shades of old bloodstain he still thought he could see sometimes.

He could crush them with a subtle wrist snap of expertly-applied pressure, torque the joints out of shape the wrong way, bring her screaming to her knees-

Seifer blinked.

He had been good at that, once. He had known just where to twist and wrench and separate, to peel apart the seams of swollen knuckle hump with a greenstick crack of twig snap.

He had never known each bone sounded slightly different when broken, from the gunshot reverberation of the larger thumb joint, to the more faint splinter of sheared-off pinky finger, hanging at an angle that reminded him of Joss Malcolm's jaw.

Seifer shut his eyes for just a moment, picturing her face, coming gradually closer to his, and her lips, sealed gently shut against his own.

He flipped them back open.

She was staring back at him with a quizzical little slant to one eyebrow, her lips flattened into a soft line of confused frown. "Seifer, what-"

"We're going on a date." he blurted out, turning away from her to start walking again, pulling her along behind him now as he charged ahead, parting the crowd around him like a point of ship prow.

"Oh, we are?" Quistis replied, sounding amused. "I'll admit it's been some time for me, but the last time I went on a date, it was a mutually consensual agreement between both parties."

He could see the Palace up ahead, a long slender line of shining mirror face. "You've never been on a date with me before, Instructor. I don't really need to ask you, because we both know no sane woman would turn me down."

Seifer let go of her hand as they reached the entryway steps, still in various stages of repair, ripples of yellow caution banner fluttering around them like tatters of wind-ravaged flag. "1900 tonight. I'll pick you up at your room."

He didn't look at her as he spit out details like her answer could not crush him, like he wouldn't have to stand there and pretend he was still whole, without letting his self-assured smirk slip, without letting the pulp of his heart begin to leak through out of his chest wall and into the pores of his skin.

He could feel her eyes burning into him as he walked away.

* * *

><p>Zell looked very nice today, Ellone noticed with a smile.<p>

He had both feet up on Laguna's desk-a problem Esthar's president kept trying to remedy by repeatedly slapping them off-and one hand buried in the spikes of his hair, his eyes mischief-lit and exceptionally blue against the shirt he wore in the same color.

He gave Ellone her smile back when he noticed it, and Laguna, catching it, suddenly leaned across the desk to jab Zell sharply in the stomach with a pencil he was holding. "You making eyes at my niece, Dincht?"

Ellone rolled her eyes. "Uncle Laguna, we agreed you would stop the overprotective father act back when I was twenty-one, and you scared a date I was bringing to that ball we held for the Galbadian ambassador so badly he peed all over the floor."

"That was Ward-guy thought he was going to crush his skull or something."

"I distinctly remember you threatening to send presidential assassins after him if he so much as touched me all night long."

Laguna guffawed. "If he was stupid enough to believe that, he wasn't good enough for you anyway. Now Dincht here, he's got that pervert look to him-"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Zell demanded loudly, slapping back at him as Laguna poked another pencil across the desk toward him.

"Put your feet down, you ass."

"Or what? You'll sic your assassins on me, old man?"

They began playfully wrestling each other over Laguna's desk, messing up the stacks of paperwork she had spent half the morning organizing, and she had to make frantic rescue attempts now beneath flailing arms and fistfuls of shirt collar, snatching fluttering sheets of document here and there where she could reach them.

Seifer, across from them with one ankle crossed over the top of his thigh and an arm across the back of the couch, rolled his head through a crack of neck pop like a string of fireworks going off. "Am I gonna' make a report or am I gonna' sit on my fucking ass all day?"

Laguna released Zell to turn on him. "Hey, don't talk like that in front of my niece!"

He rolled his eyes.

"Uncle L, it's a word I've heard before. I'll survive. Now would you please take your hand off that balance sheet? You're tearing it."

"Huh? Oh, sorry." He seated himself once more, tightening the ponytail Zell had mussed. Ellone noted there was a little more gray in it than she remembered, old man silver that stood out among the strands of dark hair that had thus far managed to prevail.

He had a sideways v of deepening crow's feet bracketing both eyes, and she had not noticed that before either.

She kept her sigh to herself. Squall was aging him.

"All right, so what, exactly was goin' on down at Odine's lab?"

Seifer shrugged. "Don't know. Two G. Garden cadets stopped us as soon as we got inside. Wouldn't let us past the main lab; they said Odine didn't want to be disturbed and that he'd taken the phone off the hook himself so no one could bother him."

Laguna frowned, and she watched the creases around his eyes furrow deeper. "They didn't say anything else? You get a chance to ask them about the computer system?"

"No. They looked ready to shoot us just for standing there. Trepe thought it'd be better to just get the hell out of there for now."

Laguna rubbed his jaw. "Yeah, probably. Still, taxpayers are footin' the bill for that lab; I have a right to know what's going on down there. I'll put a few guys on it, see if they can't get some answers. Quisty ok?"

Seifer rolled his eyes again. "No; I let them put their dicks all over her and kill her when they were done."

"Hey!" Laguna snapped, covering Ellone's ears. Gently, she peeled his hands free, setting them back down on the desk with a patient head shake.

Zell leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk again, and smirked. "Seifer'd never let anything happen to Quistis, would ya', Almasy?"

"Shut it, Wuss." he snapped.

"They're goin' on a date tonight." Zell's feet twitched in a laugh as Seifer came to his feet in one smooth motion that was almost as quick as the arc of his arm, a blur of wind-up that whistled the paperweight he had snatched from the end table beside the couch past Zell's nose, and into the far wall.

Ellone winced at the crash; Laguna beside her did not even twitch an eye-his entire focus had become a laser he aimed at Seifer Almasy in a fatal cut of squint that lacerated him from boots tips to forehead, his entire body hunching forward now to curve down over his knees as he set both elbows on top of them. "Going on a date with Quistis, huh?"

Seifer turned to Zell and pantomimed slitting his throat.

"Y'know, Quisty doesn't have a dad to interrogate you."

"Uncle La-"

"What are your intentions for her? Where are you taking her? What time are you going to have her home by? Do you even have a job, you bum?" Laguna cut her off, sending Zell into another spasm of helpless laughter.

Ellone buried her face in her hands, but she was suppressing a giggle. "Uncle L, leave him alone. And you _know _he has a job; you hired him."

"I know. That's just something you're supposed to say in the interrogation." He leaned forward again; Seifer had seated himself once more, his ankle back up over his knee, both hands behind his head and a look of such absolute steadiness on his face that Laguna had to be disappointed. "So where you takin' her? It's not safe for you kids to be wandering around Esthar right now."

"He's not sure." Zell answered for Seifer, receiving another glare that he ignored.

Laguna snapped his fingers. "There's a parade tonight down main street; real neat to watch; fireworks, dancers, jugglers, floats, the whole deal. Take her up on the balcony on the third floor; you'll have a real good view of all the fireworks from there. I could have a little table set up with dinner-some candles, flowers-"

Zell nodded approvingly. "That totally fits Almasy's personality too; he's all soft like a marshmallow inside, least when it comes to Quisty."

"Shut _up_, Wuss." he snarled.

"Stop teasing him." Ellone protested. "I think it's sweet."

Seifer did not look pleased by this defense.

"She's got this one ice cream she really likes…what's it called again?" Zell scratched his head. Moomba Mango! You got some of that around here?"

"I can get it."

"Yeah! That, and for the main course you could do…uh…pasta'd be good. Oh, and brownies to go with the ice cream-Quisty loves those…" He trailed off in thought as Ellone stared at him.

* * *

><p>Outside, she keeps nodding and smiling and shuffling paperwork like everything is fine, like it is all just okay and she is not somewhere else, far away.<p>

She is standing on that beach again.

She does this often; one moment, she is filing a paper or typing a keystroke of command, and suddenly, her fingers are not poised over a keypad waiting to fall, and they are not arranging file folders in neat rows of color coordination organization-

They form a knot that is the union of her damp hand and the sleeve of Zell Dincht's SeeD uniform sleeve, and they are trying not to shake.

They do not succeed, because Selphie is dead and Cid is a spectral waste of a man, skeletal corpse shell where her father used to be. They twitch like her heart, trying to wither and shred and fly apart in her chest, but she can't let them succeed, she cannot let them _win_-

Because Irvine Kinneas is beside her, and his face is pale and clenched and frozen like the imitation wax doll of the woman he loves, laid out in her silk-lined coffin like novelty museum display.

Because he does not shake and he does not cry, he does not even _twitch_, and if he can take this, if he can survive it, so can she.

Even though she doesn't want to. Even though this woman that was once a little sister dancing on a beach, scribbling in the margins of Ellone's coveted 'big girl' books is gone and she cannot understand why, she cannot even begin to fathom how this is acceptable, how it is _fair_-

And she has to remember how to breathe. She counts each slow in breath and every shiver of exhale, and the ocean is still pounding in her ears, it is _roaring_-

And they are staring at her. All of them. This man who is and has been and will always be a father to her, and this pair of blue, blue eyes watching her with affectionate concern-a head tilt of blonde angled toward her, the same color it used to be on a beach where that little sister was still alive-

She smiles like nothing is wrong, like her world is whole and unbroken and perfectly all right, and she goes back to tapping her paperwork back into lines of military precision that would make Quistis proud.

* * *

><p>Seifer pounded on the door to Quistis' room, his heart hammering in his ears.<p>

If she wasn't here he was going to-

What, kill her? That had been his mother's solution to dealing with most things that disappointed her. She had only let him live, because she could not draw his death out long enough. Because she could not fit all the pain and grief and suffering that she wanted him to feel into the limitations of his human body, into the brief window of timeline between her first stab of fury-cast spell, and the final hemorrhage leak of his body at last giving up.

He waited another moment, blood like a rumble of surf throbbing inside his ears, and then he lifted his hand again.

"_Fuck_."

He spun away from the door and put his hand through his hair, yanked it hard like the physical jabs of pain that stung his scalp would somehow help, like they would somehow bring her padding up to that door with a smile on her face and her hair in soft waves around the makeup she had put on just for him-

The door swung open.

Seifer jumped back like she had just tried to stab him.

Quistis stood looking up at him. Behind her, Ellone waved cheerfully, still holding the curling iron that was the apparent culprit to the current state of Quistis' hair, done up in soft coils that had been pinned into an artful spray at the nape of her neck.

"I got her all ready for you; she was going to try and duck out, but Zell and I caught her."

Seifer scowled. Well, it wasn't like that was a big damn surprise, was it? He was more shocked he hadn't arrived to find her strangling Wuss with Save the Queen in her escape attempt.

Zell's blonde head leaned out around the door; his arm looped up into a flash of thumbs-up that was almost gone before Seifer could notice it.

"Have fun, Quistis!" Ellone said, coming up to the door and giving her a gentle push out into the corridor that almost staggered her right into Seifer's chest.

"I think there are far more important things we could be-"

"Nope." Zell interrupted, popping back out from behind the door. "President himself sanctioned this. Have fun, kids! Don't do anything I wouldn't!"

"So, basically, don't get laid?" Seifer asked.

"Hey, I _could _get laid if I wanted to-"

Quistis gave a little huff of irritation, and closed her hand around Seifer's arm, her fingers digging in like the barbs of her whip. He noticed her fingernails had been painted, soft polished peach that caught the light overhead. Ellone had probably been responsible for that, too. And the supple ripple of blue shirt that matched her eyes, curving down into a slope of neckline that just barely hinted at cleavage. She had on a slick of some kind of lip shit that caught the light like her nails, and Seifer's pulse stammered. He wondered what it tasted like.

He wondered if he'd get to find out.

They mounted the long wraparound spiral of the staircase together, in silence.

It was an extensive climb, and that too they made without speaking, until they stepped out onto the balcony Laguna had designated as the perfect spot for their date, and Quistis' first glimpse of their evening together brought her eyebrows up into her hairline.

The table for two Laguna had arranged to be carried all the way up that staircase by a few grumbling kitchen workers was a low intimate box of a thing, barely large enough to seat a couple comfortably, which was probably the point. Smash the chick right up practically against your dick, and something was bound to happen.

In this case, probably nonconsensual circumcision gone horribly wrong.

A drape of tablecloth flickered with the long thin shadows of candle flame that stitched patterns across its surface; the pyrotechnic glare of orange glanced off fine china dinner set, and lit up her face.

"You did all of this?"

"Depends. You like it?"

"I'm…surprised. I wasn't expecting something like this." She gave him a sideways look that he couldn't even try to pretend he hadn't seen, because his heart became a wad of nerves in his dry-cotton mouth, and sweat like the trickles of blood his hands were used to wearing stretched out to coat his entire palm.

"Still didn't answer my question, Instructor."

She crossed her arms, and a little hint of a smile played on her lips now. "It isn't horrible."

He let his face relax into a smile. "Then I did all of it. That table was fucking heavy, by the way; I carried it all the way up here on my back."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"You'll have to prove that."

"Tch; you want me to perform an encore? It took me five hours to arrange everything just right. I'm not picking up the table and fucking it all up."

"You arranged everything? Even the flowers?" She delicately fingered a fringe of cardinal hanging over the lip of the vase Ellone must have picked out, because that fuck Wuss and Squall's moron father certainly didn't have the taste to choose something that didn't resemble a penis.

"Yeah. I took this class at Garden on interior design."

"I must have missed that part of the curriculum." Quistis replied dryly, pulling out one of the chairs. She settled herself in, knees knocking up against the table's underside, and then, suddenly, she laughed, and it went all the way through him like his mother's used to, except this did not shred all the rest of the dignity that just barely clung in meager strips to the hollow framework of empty skeleton that was all she had left for him.

This turned his gut to liquid, and his heart into adhesive, sealing up the back of his throat.

Quistis held up a square of napkin. "I believe I accidentally took your place."

Seifer squinted, and in that candlelit sweep of balcony surrounding them, he could just barely make out dark squiggles that appeared to be writing.

She began to read it aloud. "Tips and Tricks For Not Screwing This Up, You Dumbass:

1. Don't be such a potty mouth. Quisty likes gentleman. Try to be more like me.

2. Do something about your face. Haha!

3. Don't call her 'Instructor' or me 'Wuss' or Squall 'Pubes' or anything like that. We've got names, you know, Almasy.

4. Don't stare at her boobs! (That one's from Laguna. He says if he hears you tried to fondle them, he's going to knock your teeth out.)"

Seifer snatched it away from her; a brief clench of fist crumpled it into a network of wrinkles that ruined Zell's chicken scratch list, and then he shoved it all into his pocket. "Fucking idiot." he muttered under his breath.

Quistis smiled sweetly up at him. "Wasn't that number one on the list?"

"I'm gonna' fucking kill Wuss."

"You should be thanking him. He's the main reason I'm here."

Seifer eased his chair out across from her; it was a short stub of a seat, and he tried not to think about how ridiculous he probably looked with his knees halfway to his chin, his long legs crunched uncomfortably up against the table.

"Tch. What'd that idiot say?"

Quistis smiled and looked down at her hands, folded together on top of the tablecloth. She released the knot to smooth a crease from its surface. "Well, mostly he just made me question his sexual orientation. I believe he was trying to put in a good word for you, but he chose an…odd angle to come from." Her lips flickered again. "He started out by pointing out to me that your foul language was kind of charming in a way once you got used to it, and that over your years at Garden he'd spent a lot of time in the locker room with you and that certain parts of your anatomy were nothing to turn a nose up at. 'If you get what I'm saying, Quisty' is how he put it, I believe."

Seifer choked on the drink he had just lifted to his lips, and set it back down with an accusatory glare. Not alcohol; just some kind of berry-flavored cider not nearly strong enough to help him survive this night. Goddammit; that cheapass Loire couldn't have sprung for something with a little more kick to it?

"And then-what else was it he told me…oh, yes; he said you had very nice eyes, and then he asked me if your butt didn't make me want to just take a big old bite out of it, the way you would a really good hot dog."

Seifer rasped a cough into his curled-up fist.

Quistis buried her smile in her own hand. "Go down the wrong tube?"

He aimed his best glare at her. "I'm going to have to start locking my door at night, now, you realize that? Or I'm gonna' wake up one night with Wuss' dick in my mouth."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, he did take back what he said about your…anatomy. He told me if he was being honest he actually felt a little sorry for you. I might be misquoting him, but I believe he compared it to 'a six months premature baby's penis.'"

"_What_?"

Quistis tipped her face down into her hands, both shoulders vibrating so violently that the shockwaves from them rippled all the way down into the rest of her, shaking the table where she leaned up against it. "I'm joking, Seifer."

He slanted his chair backward on two legs, holding onto the table for leverage. "You know, Instructor, I think you're just trying to bait me into pulling it out to prove you wrong."

"Well, I do see that Laguna provided a steak knife for just such a purpose." The piece of cutlery she held up winked distant starlight back at him like the faint sputters of firework he was just beginning to see out of the corner of one eye, double-wrapped in a layer of notebook paper that she peeled off and held up with a smile.

"Use in case of an emergency. Seifer trying to touch you is an emergency, and you have a full presidential pardon in the case of just such a crisis. Also in case he pulls out his wang." His chair thumped back down onto the pavement. "Fucking-Pubes' dad is a nut job."

"He's just protective. He's a male version of Edea, always trying to-"

Color bled from her face like the twists of ice water that filled his veins.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have mentioned her-"

"It's ok." Seifer cut her off brusquely, looking out over the railing, across star-sprinkled nightscape and down into far away revelers, twirling and pivoting and painting the night sky with sweeps of jester's sleeve. If he squinted just a little, tilted his head just so, he could see a flicker of blonde like a core of flame down on one of those floats, flanked by the jagged spray of his mother's elaborate headdress.

Would mention of her ever stop fucking gutting him?

They sat together in silence for a long time, until finally he saw her head come up. She had a shred of napkin between her fingers, picked apart into strands she was still slowly pulling at while she found somewhere to look that was not him. "Why did you want to do this?"

"Actually, all this shit was pretty much all Wuss and Ellone."

She indicated the table spread out between them. "I don't mean this. I mean…why did you want to go on a date in the first place?"

He looked down at his hands, balled up into fists on his kneecaps because it was the only way he could think of to hold himself the fuck together, because these symbols of violence were the only things he would ever really understand. Because his whole goddamned life had always been about tearing down or ripping apart, and now when he finally, for the first fucking time he could remember, wanted to go about building something up, he didn't even know how to approach it.

So he just sat there, staring down at scars like contours of artery, branching out across these hands he didn't know what the fuck to do with, where to put, and then he let a tic of a smile that did not hold any humor twist his lips like a grimace of pain. "I thought I already made that clear."

"I was going to give you a pass on that, considering your inebriated state."

He let that smile stretch more, even though it was all still just as goddamned unfunny. "Yeah; beer makes me act like a jackass."

"I noticed."

Seifer felt his pulse trip hammer and then stop, and then make its slow chugging way through the process all over again.

And finally, he pulled his eyes up to hers. "Doesn't mean I was lying, Trepe."

She went back to dismembering her napkin. "Seifer-"

"And don't _fucking _brush me off." he snapped. "I didn't kiss myself at Raijin and Fujin's."

She pushed her glasses carefully back up her nose. "I'm sorry for that. It was…inappropriate. I shouldn't have done it."

Just because he'd expected that didn't make it hurt any less.

When Seifer laughed, it hurt his entire chest, snapped a clamp down over his heart and _squeezed _the motherfucker until he could barely fucking breathe through the pain. They could both hear the bitterness in it, and Quistis slowly, carefully set her napkin out away from her hands, folding them again. "So what the fuck was that all about, then? Did you manage to pretend I was Squall long enough or something?" He sneered. "Shoulda' fucked me while you could keep the illusion going, Instructor."

"This has nothing to do with him, Seifer." Quistis said quietly. "I just…" She trailed off, shaking her head. Her voice had gone very low and very strained, and something in it made him shut the fuck up. "Look what happened to Irvine and Selphie. People like us do not get fairytales, Seifer."

"Did I ask you for one?" He wanted to snap, to lunge and snarl and bite, because she had hurt him, because she did not even fucking _understand _what she was doing to him-

But he did not. Because his voice was a hammer-he knew, he had heard it, had made it into a weapon just like everything else on his body, and a blow from it would stun her, reel her, and a part of him wanted that-a part of him wanted her to burn and hurt and throb with that same fucking _pain _he had to live with every goddamned day of his whole life-

But most of him didn't. Most of him wanted to tell her that he'd do anything she needed him to if it would wipe that look from her face.

"Irvine told me…he told me that if I felt something for you, I needed to not waste any time. If I hem and haw, drag my feet-it might be too late. You might be gone. Or I might be. But…we can't fall in love without serious consequences. We will not live to be old; most of us will not go on to become mothers and fathers and grandparents. We'll both probably die on a battlefield somewhere. I've seen what losing Selphie did to Irvine, Seifer." She stared down at that square of napkin for a long, long time, and then she scraped her chair back, and walked over to the railing where she set down a hand as shaky as a stump of arthritic claw.

He followed her. The bitterness had lifted from his chest like a shroud of morning-exiled fog, and in its place there was just that feeble twist of hope flame now, singeing everything. "Do you have feelings for me?"

She sighed, looking out over the street below. "I don't know."

He tried not to let that flicker of hope burn down to cinders; it wasn't a no, was it?

He leaned on the railing beside her. "You can't make yourself not feel anything, just because it's not convenient, Trepe. You plan on giving a shit about any of them? Leonhart, Dincht, the cowboy-Selphie. Rinoa. Just happened, didn't it? You can't shake your fucking finger at it and make it go away, or send it to detention." And neither could he, goddammit; did she think he wanted this? Did she think he _enjoyed _this bitch-in-heat panting, this coil of nausea that was the nerves he could never seem to fucking control around her? Did she think he fucking _liked _standing here with his head bent like his feelings for her were a fucking weight that pulled his neck down under a practice swing of headsman's axe?

He didn't, he fucking _hated _it, and he wanted to rage and scream and lash out until the whole world got it, until the entire fucking universe became a sounding board for his disappointment and his fury and his failures.

He wanted to punch a hole in the world, and watch it all bleed dry.

Quistis sighed again.

Seifer had to clear his throat, to force the next words out, because he was afraid, he was fucking _terrified _that he already knew the answer. That he knew exactly what she would say, and the precise inflection with which she would say it.

Her reply was going to shatter the brittle remnants of him, but he had to ask it anyway. "Are you turning me down because you're a coward, or because you hate me?"

Quistis' eyes were full of pain when they revolved slowly around to face him at last. "I don't hate you, Seifer." There was nothing but weariness in her voice. "I just don't think I can do any of this."

"Because it's too hard?" He bared his teeth in something that wasn't a smile. "Instructor, life's one big fucking disappointment. Why not take anything that's good where you can get it? When I was just an asshole on the other side of a computer, didn't you tell me you didn't want to avoid something just because it might disappoint you? You said that, you remember, Trepe? What the fuck happened to that? Before you knew who I was, you were willing to give something a try. At least be fucking honest with me and tell me this is all a bunch of bullshit you're throwing at me to try and let me down _nicely_. I don't need a fucking _head pat _from you."

She shook her head, pulling her gaze back down to her hands. "It isn't that, Seifer. I've just had longer to think about all of this. That's all."

He grasped her by the shoulders, not roughly the way his anger snarled for him to, but very gently, very lightly, like she was a figurine he could break between his clumsy oaf's hands.

"Seifer-" Her attempted shrug-off was just a half-hearted thing, and he held on easily. "Seifer, you're wasting your time on me. Not because I hate you; I just can't…I _will not _leave myself open to what Irvine's going through. To what Squall or Rinoa will probably one day suffer as well."

He didn't know what else to do, to say or think or try, and so instead of behaving rationally, instead of letting her go and walking away, instead of leaving her alone on that balcony under a sky lit up like solar eclipse, he tightened his hands.

And he leaned in closer.

His lips brushed hers, very softly.

He let it last for just a moment, with that sky rattling bursts of pyrotechnics over their heads like cannon fire, with her hands knotted in surprise against the front of his chest and her mouth warm and soft and pliant underneath his own, and then he lifted his head, and he stepped back.

But he did not let go of her shoulders.

"I am in love with you, Trepe. I tried to say it before, and I was a fucking idiot and fucked it up. But that's the goddamned deal, and you know what, Instructor? I still do even though I know that tomorrow some asshole might shoot you in the back of the head. It might happen right in front of me, and I'll have to watch the whole goddamned thing. And it doesn't change anything. You don't get to fucking pick and choose-you can't block out the shit you don't want just because it's not convenient. You don't think I would choose not to fucking feel this way if I could? You don't think Leonhart would have picked being an asshole loner over spending every fucking day of his life worrying about Rinoa if he'd had a choice?"

She was staring up at him with a look that twisted his gut, shoved a tip of spur like a prickle of rusty knife blade between his ribs, and hammered it home.

He felt it go all the way through his heart.

Quistis was shaking her head again, slanting those eyes back down, letting her face dip down in the follow through of that head wag until he could see just the top of her hair now. "There isn't any _point_, Seifer. Why-"

"Why care about anybody at all, if they're just going to die? Everybody fucking dies, Instructor. Sometimes they go before you and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. So maybe you should just drop all your friends. Maybe you should go live on a fucking island somewhere no one can visit, and you can be alone for the rest of your life. That sound any better?"

His whole goddamned life had been that island, after the war.

It was hell. He had always thought, after his mother, that he would like to be alone, that isolation was the happiest ending he could think of-and yet, put him in his own room at the end of the hall with no Raijin or Fujin or any single person who gave a shit about him-not even that face staring him back in the mirror each morning-and all he wanted, all he really needed-

Was his fucking mother. Was someone to caress nightmare sweat like fever perspiration from his brow, to stroke his fucking back while he threw up all the venom she had fed to him, the poison he'd mainlined like an addict sprawled out in the gutter.

Quistis lifted her face; she had a wrinkle of frown line between her brows, and her lips set in a thin compressed line of the bitterness that had etched itself into him like acid a long time ago. "What if I can't-" Her voice hitched like a sob and her shoulders jerked in a hiccup of missed inhale under his hands, and he lowered his face to hers again.

He didn't have anything left to fucking lose.

He let his hands slide down and his arms shift under hers, until he had them in a loop around her slender waist, until she was pressed up against him so there was no flicker of breeze or ripple of ballooning shirt front between them. Until it was just her warm body and the trip-hammer of shared pulse point crushed together now.

She touched his cheek very carefully with one of her palms.

And suddenly, everything he had just said, everything he had just tried to make her see, to truly, finally _understand_-

It all hit him like a blast of shrapnel, burning away the red-tinged layer of his consciousness. It ate into him like his mother's eyes, spitting him back out the other side fouled and warped and so fucking _ashamed _he couldn't stand to look at himself-

And he couldn't breathe. Because everything he had implored her to get-he'd spewed it all like fucking word vomit without stopping to think about it, without _letting _himself consider it, and now it was all pounding away at his brain demanding escape, beseeching him to just let it all the fuck out-

But he couldn't, because then he'd see Quistis standing there with that bullet through her head, swaying for just the eye flicker of moment it took her mind to realize she was dead, her skull peeled open in an autopsy slit around exposed brain matter like twists of maggot, half-masticated.

He didn't want to be gentle, to be _careful _anymore. Because his impassioned speech-

It wasn't just fucking propaganda. It was cold hard truth that he didn't want to face, and it echoed all the way through him like ripples across pond water. Each surge, each whitecap of generated wave pulse touched something vital, and made everything Seifer Almasy was reverberate with the reality he had spelled out for her.

She might die first, might die _tomorrow_, and then he'd have nothing left but freshly-tilled gravesite.

He opened his mouth and ground his hips into hers, and when she didn't push him away, when her body stiffened and then slowly, inch by fractional inch, relaxed back against him, Seifer slid the edge of his tongue along hers. He pushed his hands from her hips up under her shirt, let his fingers feel warm soft skin shiver and twitch underneath them; he could hear his breathing pick up like a marathoner's heading into the final half mile stretch, and if she didn't stop him, if she didn't break the kiss or thump him in the fucking head, something, _anything_-

He was going to take her right on this fucking table. Just to reassure himself, just so he could _be sure_; he wanted to feel her arch underneath him, her breasts and that thunder of pulse, of _life _slamming up against him, bare skin to bare skin, letting him know it was still there, still going. Maybe one day she would be a corpse in the ground, but here, now, she was alive and whole and she wanted all of him the way he wanted her-

Her fingers found the hem of his shirt and slipped underneath it, hooked into the waistband of his pants, and his mouth left hers and brushed the curve of her neck, and then lower, and she gave a little hiss between her teeth that arced her body into his. His entire world whited out, because she had all of her pressed right up against his dick and he couldn't think anymore, he didn't even fucking _want _to-

_-yes boy just like that very good-_

No.

_-his mother's hands on him in the dark and his shame wound up like a snake inside his gut coiling tighter and tighter and tighter because his dick was hard anyway and he had it inside her now and she fucked him as dispassionately as a whore-_

He made a little sound against her lips that was part grief and half moan, and he buried his face in her neck like she could make his mother go away, like that curve of pale throat column was his fucking salvation-

_-matron please don't let her do this anymore MATRON please just fucking help me I don't know what to do-_

_-mother's lips and hands and eyes and the shadows were laughing at him they were _laughing _and he couldn't make them stop because later when she was gone they would show him images of her murder splashed out across the walls in black and white puppet theater and he would stay he would listen because part of him wanted to try it-_

Seifer pushed away from her, and spun back around toward the railing, slapping his hands down hard, his breathing coming in spurts of gasp that hunched his whole body forward over the balustrade.

She joined him without saying anything, trying to smooth back into place the hairdo he had destroyed.

Fireworks snapped and popped above them. They threw out an arch like braids of rope weave, dust-shimmer white that hung in the sky.

Her face lit up with them.

She was fucking radiant, and he had to turn away, because there was that goddamned knot back in his throat, plugging his airway. Stopping his fucking lungs.

Because maybe he had her right now; maybe she let his arms go around her waist again and his chin come down on top of her head-

But how fucking long would that last? How long before she remembered that these arms and this chin and that slow brush of thumb pad along her cheek belonged to Seifer Almasy? How long before she looked at him the way his mother had, like he was an insect she should have killed underneath her boot a long time ago? How _fucking _long before she brought those hands molded into fists against his hips up to his chest, in a push that put the full force of her body behind it just the way Garden had taught her?

Another explosion, close by, jumped them apart, banging his elbow up against the railing.

Quistis leaned over it with a frown, her eyebrows coming together. "I don't think-"

Below them, the orderly line of parade participants turned into a tangled shrieking mob of mass hysteria. A chain of pops like a string of firecrackers cut through the screaming, and now Seifer could see a burst of muzzle flare like fallen star light up the crowd.

He felt his heart hit the ground somewhere between his boots.

And so it fucking began.

**A/N: Oh, and if you guys are fellow Star Wars nerds, I wrote a brief little standalone based off Bioware's new online game The Old Republic, so check that out. /end shameless plug.**


	19. Chapter 17

**A/N: Guys, you know S/Q are not going to turn into a boring old married couple with me at the wheel, because you know by now that I can't just let them be peaceful and happy and together, right? Tequila Princess, your review about Seifer getting c-blocked by impending civil war cracked me up-because, y'know, I hadn't thought of it that way, but you definitely made a good point. Anyway, to any and all who have ever reviewed, thank you so much; as you know, I of course do not get any money for writing this horrendously bloated novel of a fanfic, so fawning praise is the only payment I can ever receive for this, AND I NEED IT. This story is finally winding down, by which I mean the end is at last in sight. You guys still have several chapters to go before you're caught up to what I have written in Works so far, but for me I'm at last at a point in the story where I can finally see the end, which makes me sort of sad. It's still chapters away, but we're definitely (finally!) going into the final stretch. And then I will have to find something else to do with myself, a frightening, frightening thought. Anyway, with that said, on with the head smashin'. **

**Chapter Seventeen**

Presidential Palace

Esthar

"We are in full lockdown mode from here on out until further notice; _nothing _gets in, and not a single fucking thing gets out, except us, understand? We have all our VIPs in the panic room and a small team guarding it right now. We are the Palace's first line of defense; we are all that's between this building and an attack like the one we had a few weeks ago. Military's on their way, but we don't know how long until ETA. There are riots cropping up all over the city they've got their hands full managing right now. President Loire is a priority of course, but many of the streets have been blocked off and the convoys are having trouble getting through. We are it, ladies and gentlemen."

The man striding the square of office carpet he paced like he owned it had the severe buzz cut and leonine stalking grace of career military, his spine perfectly, rigidly straight as he walked.

Quistis watched him from her perch on Laguna's couch, Save the Queen in her lap and Zell and Irvine on either side of her.

Across from her, one hip up against the wall and his trench coat flipped out around the pommel of Hyperion, Seifer looked absolutely blasé, his lips pulled down in a curve of frown that was more his usual expression than any reaction to the speech going on before them.

He didn't look at her.

She went back to staring at that man and the incessant back and forth and back and forth track curve his feet carried him through, keeping her face as mannequin expressionless as his own.

"We have been led to believe that these rioters are calling for the resignation of President Loire; word's leaked that the 'heroes' who attempted to take care of the sorceress problem at Balamb Garden were slaughtered by a SeeD team these rioters are claiming were hired by President Loire to take them out. We have every reason to believe they are heading this way next."

Quistis' throat tasted like ash. That was a _sealed _mission; she had not even reviewed the report herself. Was this all just conjecture to fan the flames of the fire that had been steadily climbing its way toward a bonfire blaze the day Laguna leaned enough political pressure on T. Garden to force a ceasefire? Or had someone at Garden-one of her own _students_, perhaps-

Had they leaked classified information? It was entirely possible the small group that had attacked Rinoa and killed Selphie were not the only ones dissatisfied with B. Garden's support of the very entity they had trained to kill. Her disappearance, rather than cooling the fire, seemed to have just pushed it higher, surged it hotter, and this was the result of that, the spillover of straining dam flow, waiting to drown them all.

Quistis wanted to throw up.

"We're throwing you SeeDs out on the front lines; now's your time to live up to your reputations." Laguna's head of security snapped, executing a crisply precise about-face that pivoted him around to look at Irvine. "You. Sharp shooter, right?"

"Yes, sir." Irvine drawled.

"We'll position you on the roof of the coffee shop across the street. The rest of you are on the ground with the rest of us. We will be facing untrained civilians for the most part, but they've got superior numbers on us. Try and blend in, for fuck's sake. They see you, you'll end up with your ass shot off. Based on the last attack, we've got a few people in there who know what they're doing. Ex-military, private contractors-I don't know, but you fuck up, and you're dead. You play it smart and you might be dead anyway; we've got a lot of people out there today, ladies and gentlemen. You ambush them, you run and hide; nobody be a goddamned hero, unless this building is threatened. Understand?"

Quistis saw a ripple of nod pass through the small crowd assembled throughout the office like a shudder of breeze across a flag.

She did not mirror it.

She did _not _understand why someone might open Zell's skull today with a line of gunfire like stitch work, unlacing his head instead of suturing it shut. Why today she might kneel beside Irvine as he tried to breathe through the soggy crater of his blown-open lung, his lips flapping like beached fish gills, and realize there was nothing she could do to help.

She never had.

And yet, she would do her duty anyway. She would fight and defend and perhaps watch her friends die around her, perhaps die herself, because she was supposed to. Because her entire life had not been a real childhood but rather one long preparation for a moment such as this, groundwork that had been laid from the time she was ten years old, a wide-eyed new cadet seeing Garden for the first time, and perhaps even before that.

Perhaps all the way back at the orphanage, Cid and Matron's desperate little parentless recruits just frantic to be loved, no matter what they had to do.

It was an ugly thought, and she did not want to have it.

_-you can't make yourself not feel anything, just because it's not convenient, Trepe- _

"Move out."

She made herself not look at Seifer as she stood up, as Kiros and Ward shuffled past with a stern reminder from the former to be careful, and a head nod of silent agreement from the latter.

Zell and Irvine squeezed her hands; the sharp shooter shifted Exeter across his shoulders, just enough to adjust his hat across his brow so that it did not bump her as he leaned down to graze her forehead with a brother's tender kiss, and then they too were gone.

And somehow, she was alone in the office with him.

He didn't close the space between them.

He just stared at her, for a long time, until Quistis' palms began to sweat, until the painful ball of her heart, compressed like someone had flattened it in a wring of palm press drifted all the way up into her throat. She gripped the handle of Save the Queen like it could somehow tell her what to do, what to say, how to let him know that she hoped he was waiting for her alive on the other side.

"Don't die, Instructor." That was all he said to her, and then he vanished out into the hall with Hyperion over one shoulder and his coat flapping behind him.

* * *

><p>Midnight strikes cold and hard and brutally.<p>

And he is still waiting.

The sky has gone starless over his head, black and blank and silent as the void inside his chest.

This is different from the Selphie pain, that cruel slow-shred of parting muscle fiber that is another piece of his heart separating itself out every day. This is Quistis' face, staring sightlessly up into the subtle dribbles of rain he can hear against his hat brim. And that idiot Dincht, bringing him those damn hot dogs like they could solve anything, like this hole her death has opened inside him is just gnawing hunger pang waiting to be filled-

He brushes water from his hat, and repositions his hands on Exeter.

The Palace across from him is a wide eerie stretch of desertion. Apocalypse wasteland, busy with just the ghosts of all the many people he has killed, coming out to play in this moment of sniper's isolation, this Hyne-damned _waiting _that he has always loathed, that he has always wanted to pull the trigger on instead of slaughtering another human being. Instead of murdering someone's sister or brother or father.

He lays his finger down along the trigger guard.

A sniper's entire life can be measured in the slow steady whisper of his in breath, and the controlled flicker of his repressed heart rate.

He suppresses these things, this leisurely pulse thrum and that low hum of inhale, because each ratchet of the slide becomes his breath, is his heartbeat. Each thunder of recoil back against his shoulder forms his entire existence; all of them, together, are the only things that matter.

Breeze shear and crosswind velocity are hindrances, annoyances, but his mind has been so carefully trained, so meticulously fine-tuned that he accounts for them automatically, without even thinking about it.

He is, instead, thinking about the moment.

Inhale. Exhale. Squeeze gently, lightly, with a caress of finger stroke like a soft graze down a lover's cheek.

And someone's head explodes. Someone's skull becomes a halo of red in your rifle scope, painting earth like rain fall.

It is that simple, and that complicated.

It is the same thing he sees over and over again, while he is sleeping, and even when he cannot sleep at all.

* * *

><p>The heroes of movies are jokes. They spit one-liners like afterthoughts, trail admirers like faithful puppies of wise-cracking sidekick. They do not die. They are not afraid.<p>

And they always win.

A real hero shivers in the twitch of breeze he can feel across his shoulders, and tries not to choke on the nausea that is filling his mouth. He is praying he will not crap himself.

Because terror is an icicle in his guts, a finger's width of dread that is cold and yet somehow hot, and it is loosening his bowels. It is playing fuckass with all his training, whispering seductions that tell him to run, to hide. To leave them all behind, and save himself.

Real heroes are not much of a hero at all, in their own minds. Because this is the same pattern that tap dances out a rhythm like Morse code in all of their heads: you don't need to die. Let the rest of them play savior. Let the rest of them win their stupid little post-mortem medals they will not give a crap about, with their intestines poking out in loops and snarls of exposed gut lining.

This will all go away when the first bullet sings battlefield harmony over his head.

And he will forget he ever even considered it, until the next time.

But right here, right now, he is twisting the Velcro closures of his gloves like a mother wringing her hands over a child's dangerous antics. He is not just afraid, he is shit-your-pants terrified. Because in this moment, all he can see is his death, is the throat-slit, gut-shot slaughter of his friends spread out around him.

All he can wonder is if he will ever see his mother again.

This is a real hero:

He thinks and he wonders and he fears all of this-

And he stays.

Even though he might die. Even though he might watch his friends die. Even though Zell Dincht might cease to exist in the next second or moment or span of heartbeat that is an eternity in a soldier's world. Because there is an innate fragility in a soldier-they are welder's metal, pounded and bent and hammered flat into the deadly weapon countless hours of training has made of them, and yet, a single misplaced step is enough to shatter them.

A misguided slant of rising block, not getting there in time. A terminal loop of blade arc, going past and not through, a semi second window opening of opportunity.

A semi second, an eye blink, a quiver of sharp shooter finger twitch-that's long enough in a soldier's world.

And he knows this.

He knows this, and he stays anyway.

He waits. And he prays.

* * *

><p>Seifer could see them coming at last, a thin crescent moon of fanned-out formation between the buildings surrounding them.<p>

He tightened his grip on Hyperion.

These were not slogan-chanting protesters brandishing hand-painted signs, hurling their displeasure like playground bully jeers. Even from here, he could see they bristled with weaponry, hand-clutched sprays of rifle snout dangling belt fed magazine strip, and glints of blade like bone-exposed finger joint.

Three pillars down from the one he crouched behind, he could see Quistis, waiting patiently, her face absolutely neutral. Her hands fatalistically still like the heart that had gone to sleep in his chest and would not start working again.

And from a rooftop across the street, Irvine Kinneas' rifle began its swan's song of final stand concerto, a clunk of bolt cycle and cough of suppressor rasp.

He waited.

The cold lay like a thin sleet layer of frost across his hands, and the handle of his gun blade. His limbs had begun to go frozen-piston stiff with it, and he shook them out now, soundless flicks of wrist and rotations of ankle that loosened everything, broke the blood up and got it moving once more.

He cracked his neck, and then his knuckles.

And then he stepped out from behind his column, his niche of unnoticed shelter, draped in moon shadow, and he brought Hyperion around to bear one-armed.

They were running now.

Seifer fired.

A mist shower of red, of ivory-bleached bone fragment, and a head over heels rag doll tumble that flattened out into a slow shit-slickened slide the rest of them dodged like they had barely noticed this death.

That arch of bow pattern formation curved around to meet in the middle, and closed around him like jaws.

* * *

><p>He smashed into them like a wedge of chisel through wood gap, driving through to the center.<p>

Hyperion flickered and flashed and sang; he whirled and spun and twisted, turning and turning and turning, gutting and slicing and stabbing with each seamless rotation that brought him around into another attack like this was all predestined, like he knew precisely where to step and pirouette and thrust from the hip.

Seifer gored open screaming mouth, pushing Hyperion all the way through to the back, all the way out blood-matted scalp on the other side, grabbing the man's shirt for leverage. He wielded the guy like a shield in front of him, his flopping head kept neatly in line by that spike of blade point, and then he pulled the trigger.

The asshole behind him went down choking on the splintered pieces of his throat.

He unsheathed Hyperion with a wet meat squelch, and then a long smooth leap took him right into a thrust that unfastened a man's gut like he was a fucking present Seifer was opening.

And then he disappeared, back behind that pillar, dodging on to the next, side leaping slivers of moon beam in a morbid hopscotch that took him from shadow patch to shadow patch, gunfire chewing through the support column he had passed just a moment ago.

He labored up a pile of debris that had yet to be cleared out like it was a mountain, and skidded down the other side, and he hit gravel-sprinkled pavement at a dead sprint.

He reached the pillar Quistis was no longer leaning against, spun in an almost-too-late swivel of evasion that yanked his shoulder out of the way just as a hole like mortar blast frayed out from the center of that support beam, and he lifted, he aimed, and fired again.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zell back flip and spin in a twister of backfist that blew his enemy's jaw out of alignment before he could even see the martial artist fire it.

Seifer turned his forward surge into a blow, into a forehand through brow bone that came down into the brain and pushed gray matter up like a splatter of shit through the cleft Hyperion left behind. The guy dropped before he could bring his muzzle around to target Zell, and then Seifer was gone again.

Zell pulled an outstretched arm into a cross grab wrist lock that snapped it like a frail twig, and as the guy went howling to his knees, he twisted a spear hand like a knife into the guy's throat, and slumped him face first down onto the ground choking on blood.

And then he too disappeared, scrambling back behind the pillars as Laguna's private security sprang up like graveyard specters to take their places, firing streams of bullets that sparked embers of ricochet from the ground.

At his back, Exeter was still thundering.

And still he didn't see Quistis, couldn't find her in that smog screen of shrieking, howling battlefield around him, Hyperion flashing up and down and up and down as his arms and his legs and his lungs pumped, as he shot himself down that long straight line of step-cut entryway trying to make sure she was still alive.

A snap of whip leather, and a long low whistle of air cut.

The dull moist slap of butcher's knife into fresh meat, and he turned, he spun, his coat flaring out around him, his heart pounding in his ears and his throat and his fingertips, shoving blood like copper-laced bile into the back of his throat-

And he saw:

Her whip barbs in some fucker's throat, his weapon dropping and his hands flailing and his face going mottled purple, and the cold killer detachment on her face as she waited for him to strangle, to die in the arms she had draped across his shoulders as she tightened that whip like a garrote.

And suddenly, Seifer could breathe again.

He watched until she made it back to cover, and then he dove back out into that flow, that current, letting it carry him this way and that, knocking him around, bruising and gashing and trying to swallow him.

* * *

><p>The thing about being a woman in combat was the other guy was always going to be bigger than you.<p>

Superior body mass, interlocked away behind the denser bone structure of a soldier three times her size, a tank of a man with a lipless wound of a smile that showed her blood-sprayed teeth. This was what she found herself up against, and it didn't matter. She had trained her whole life against opponents far heavier and stronger and larger than she.

She let him come to her.

And then she let his underestimation of her kill him.

Save the Queen wrapped his throat like coils of reptile.

Quistis yanked, and the spray of red across his teeth became a spurt of fountain from his neck.

Someone grabbed her around the waist, and she made him her pivot point, her fulcrum, kicking off his shin and out away from that crushing bear hug, using the leverage of her entire body to slip the hold and smack lightly back down on her feet. She turned her landing into an ankle sweep, a smooth whirl of circle that brought her heel up just below the man's calves, and as he tottered and swayed and finally began to fall, she caught him with a flap of whip that uncoiled like the extension of another limb.

By the face.

He screamed as Save the Queen see-sawed through his eyeballs.

She left him to bleed out, and ducked back into the titanic shadow of the Palace.

* * *

><p>The roof beneath him cut into his stomach.<p>

Exeter flared and smoked and boomed, bruising his shoulder socket. He hadn't pulled the damn thing in tight enough in the fog of battlefield that blurred everything together into a smear of haze that didn't make sense anymore, all his training and orders and his own common sense; it all ran like paint, because the only thing that existed now was that compression of trigger finger, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing.

He could see that crazy asshole Almasy from here, smashing into the front lines like he'd somehow forgotten that a missed block here or a stumble of misstep there might kill him.

His heart wadded itself up like trashcan-bound notebook paper, and stuffed itself into his throat.

Goddammit. That idiot Dincht was right next to him, shielding Almasy and in turn being shielded by him, their fight a dance, a waltz that he might have stopped to admire, if he hadn't been so terrified that the next flash of blonde flickering along the edges of his rifle scope would splash across those interlocking lines of distance calibration soaked in red. He could see every strike and block and blur of counter punch from here-

But he couldn't join them. He couldn't nudge Dincht just enough out of the way that the whistling downswing of a blade trying to take off his head would just barely miss, and he couldn't use himself the way Almasy was, body armor he put between Zell and a man carrying fistfuls of modified over-under that swung around like the oiled turret swivel of a tank head.

So he helped the only way he could.

Irvine pinned that man and his twin over-unders in the center of those interlacing lines, and then he caressed the trigger again.

He twitched and jerked into a marionette's dance of string-cut fold-over, the over-unders climbing toward the sky and firing blindly. He fell in a heap at Almasy's feet, and the ex-knight leapt him gracefully, Hyperion not missing a stride as he soared, the blade coming down with him through a shear that winked moonlight, and bisected a man's collar bone.

* * *

><p>His first stumble, his first miscalculation in this dance he and Almasy performed like they'd been doing it their whole damn lives, came when he blinked streams of blood like sweat out of his eyes, and saw Ward fall.<p>

The guy went down like a timber-cut tree, a foot of blade through the side of his neck, sinews like the trailing ends of slashed cable peeling open around it.

He missed his block, dragged a foot, and a graze of bullet brushed hornet sting along his left shoulder. Zell staggered back, wind milled his arms, tried to catch his breath, to reconcile his brain, his heart, with this image he could see right in front of him, this fantasy that couldn't be real. Almasy whipped a hand out to grab him by the front of his shirt, pulling him upright before he could become a part of that tangled writhing mass on the ground, and he took a step forward like this would resolve the image before him into desert mirage. Just triple digit heat shimmer, and not anything genuine, not anything he needed to worry about-

Not Kiros kneeling over his friend with anguish on his face and blood in his hair, his weapon in a glossy crimson pile at his feet.

"Dincht!" Seifer snapped, and he stumbled again, he staggered, but this time it was not disbelief, not the beginning tremble of grief beginning its adrenaline jolt inside his heart and spreading out through his veins-

It was someone's knife through his back, just shy of his spinal cord, and it slid up through layers of meat and muscle and strands of artery that parted like fraying rope around it, angling for his heart.

He did not feel his knees hit the pavement.

* * *

><p>Seifer caught him one-armed as he sagged, and Hyperion trailed up through a loop that carved the knife hand of Zell Dincht's would-be murderer from his wrist. He lurched back holding the gushing stump of it, and then Seifer's blade flicked again, and took him through the side of the gut, slanting diagonally out into his liver.<p>

He left it there.

Zell slumped in his arms, his head a wet echoing thump against Seifer's chest.

His blood roared like a hurricane in his ears.

Far above him, he heard a wordless agonized scream reverberate out from that coffee shop rooftop.

"Am I gonna' die?" Zell slurred, a break in his voice like the top note of a hysterical sob, and a thin red line of internal hemorrhage trickled out over his bottom lip and down his chin.

The hurricane of his pounding blood became a soundless rushing vacuum inside his head, and it howled grief like he never would have believed he'd feel for Zell Dincht. Crybaby Chicken Wuss, doll limp in his arms, staring up at him with those blue eyes glazed in tear shine that hovered and brimmed but didn't fall.

Seifer wiped the line away with his coat sleeve, gently.

"No." he said, and he was going to make it the fucking truth, whatever he had to do.

He shifted Zell to his shoulder, in a sling of fireman's carry he cinched down with one arm across the back of his friend's flaccid legs, and then he began to run.

He scrambled through a long curve of sprint that lasted forever, that took him around the knots and snarls of combat he was no longer interested in, back toward that step-cut entryway where they could take cover. He ran like he didn't need oxygen, like his body was just cleverly machined robot disguised as a human, like he could keep going forever if he needed to, and nothing could trip or hurt or stop him.

Ahead of him, smoke smudged itself across the sky like a swipe of dirty thumb print, boiling over from the tangle of warfare he had just dodged a moment ago; the lactic acid buildup of fatal exhaustion began to chew away at his legs, dissolving them into rubber.

He kept running.

From behind explosion-eaten pillars of slanting soot-smeared glass, Quistis popped her head out, and started to sprint toward him.

"No-" This was what he tried to say, but his protest became a dry heave of a gasp that she could not have possibly heard, and her headlong dash did not falter.

The ground became a smoldering crater between them, and the shockwave threw Seifer to his knees and Zell from his shoulder, and from overhead he heard a long low whistle of incoming bomber strike.

A ripple of shudder like tectonic plate shift slid Zell farther away from him.

Through the smoke:

Robotic lockstep of military-drilled stride, coming right toward him through the haze, and Seifer's world became a short dark tunnel that brightened into dawning comprehension around him.

These weren't displeased citizens, fed up with another politician who would not listen to them, not most of them, anyway.

These were soldiers.

He recognized that asshole on the left, that pretty boy with his fringe of couldn't-quite-hack-it beard hint that had almost shot his kneecap off during the early stages of the conflict between T. Garden and B. Garden.

_SeeDs_.

They snapped shut around him.

* * *

><p>Irvine hit the ground running.<p>

His descent down a rooftop access ladder had been more a controlled fall than anything, and now he landed hard enough to send jolts of pain all the way up from his boots through his shins and into his kneecaps.

Esthar's military made its appearance at last in the sky overhead, but they were shredding everything, side-mounted machine guns swiveling around to stitch lines of suppressive fire like chain lightning, ripping through enemy and ally alike, because Laguna's people, and his friends caught up in that hellglow that flickered red and orange and spat twists of gray-they were all expendable, just collateral damage; the Palace, the president-these were the only things that mattered-

But they _weren't_, not in the sick knot that tied itself behind his heart and inside his gut-Quistis and Zell and even that dickhead Almasy he had just watched risk his life for something that wasn't himself or his misguided, distorted ambitions-

He had lost Selphie and he was not at all sure he would ever recover from that, and he _would not _lose any of the rest of them.

Men began to materialize through the smoke and dust and firefly sputters of muzzle flare, fanning out in an arch like animal trap, spreading wide to close its jaws around Almasy where he crouched over Zell.

He didn't have time to get his rifle to his shoulder, so he let it curve up through the arc of natural follow-through that was the piston-pump of his arms, and fired from the hip.

At the front of the line, that apex of man-shaped hammer wedge closing in like a finishing blow, an extended arm jerked and flailed and flopped over on top of the rest of its owner before it could shove a foot of cold hard steel through Almasy's belly.

* * *

><p>Seifer launched himself.<p>

He didn't have time to think or feel or reconsider; he just leapt, he _soared_, and the long broad curve of his trajectory brought him down in the middle of them, weaponless.

He did it because he was the only thing between them and Zell Dincht, and he tore into them with animal fury.

The weapon Garden had forged and hammered and honed let itself separate out from the man, let Seifer Almasy watch it all like out-of-body experience because he could not afford to remember that spindly line of scarlet leaking down skin pale as corpse flesh. He could not afford to remind himself that Zell Dincht's life was seeping out beneath him like oil stain, that he might already be dead, that Seifer might already have failed him, might have disappointed one more person in the long, long chain of failures strung throughout his life.

So he threw everything he had into cracking bone and tearing ligament and snapping spinal column; he let everything his mother had taught him about pain and suffering and death flood him, stretch out through his veins and into his limbs, sinking poison like fisherman's hook back into his heart.

He went rabid, and they died underneath him.

He let everything smoke away like the haze that gathered and coiled and burned off on the line of horizon beginning to smear pink with a faint hint of far-off dawn. Quistis Trepe's eyes, seeing him for one final time through that caldera of bomber assault, and Zell Dincht's slur of fluid-filled question, jagged as the shards of bright pain in his chest.

There was nothing but instinct left now, animal impulse that punched his teeth through some fucker's throat when that was the only opening available to him, when that was all he had left, and he hung there, swaying, waiting for something to give.

And finally, it did, with a wet meaty tear of neck flesh that peeled off in a long strip that laid bare the bone underneath.

A low roll of thunder started in his ears; that same fever spike of madness pounding away at him like migraine. He remembered it from the parade, from his mother's bed, from those shadows whispering promises from the squares of ceiling tile where they made their homes. After his mother, he had tried to fight it, to fend it off any way he could, but now-

Now he let it undulate over him, getting its teeth in his heart.

It was the only way either one of them was going to survive this.

He ducked a whistle of blade swipe that canted high over his shoulder, and he yanked, flipping the guy like an acrobat and coming up with the weapon in his hand. It was no Hyperion; the balance was all wrong and rust had chewed a long thin line of verdigris along the edge, but he stepped forward into a riposte like he'd been born with it in his hand anyway.

He flared his hand out into an open palm of come-and-get-it invitation, fitting all his teeth into a smile like predatory wolf's smirk.

Throats and guts and spurting gushes of chest cavity grinned open around him.

This was his show now, fuckers.

* * *

><p>Kiros smashed himself against them like a wall of storm against jetty barricade.<p>

Quistis watched the tall man throw himself screaming into the midst of them, the screen of smoke that restricted her vision stinging her eyes.

She couldn't see Zell or Seifer or Irvine anymore; they had all vanished, the column of smoke that built itself like a wall between Quistis and her friends enclosing her in her own little jail cell of solitary confinement. She could hear rattles of gunfire and ground quakes of military strike and war shrieks that became disbelieving death murmurs-

But she could not see them.

The only thing she could see, the only thing that existed for her in that moment of acrid swirling death cloud, was Ward Zabac, lying stretched out across the front steps like an awkward tumble of mountain avalanche.

Staring sightlessly up into the sky, flakes of ash pitting his blankly gazing eyes.

Still-dripping arteries hung from his neck in a tangle of slimy cable.

The next ground quake that humped the earth up around her in a loud crack of splitting pavement rolled him onto his side, and closed his eyes at last.

* * *

><p>Throat slit gaped back at him like eerie clown's smile.<p>

He whirled, bringing his weapon up through a crescent slice that stuck midway through an elbow joint, and then he let go; piece of shit had already gone dull.

He dodged under a claw rake of gunfire that reached out for him with a chainsaw snarl, and came up headfirst, slamming it like a battering ram into his attacker's stomach. The guy stumbled, dropped his gun, and went down with Seifer on top of him, his lips and his jaw and then his nose all smearing sideways across his face, spraying blood.

Seifer arched like a diver over the guy's head, turning it into a roll that brought him back to both feet, that he made into a jab of right hook that snapped off the xiphoid bone of the sternum and left it to tear everything all to shit inside of his next victim.

Behind him, Zell lay still stretched out, still unharmed, and a break in the fighting let Seifer crouch over him, his hand coming down to close over one shoulder. Like his touch could hold life inside him, like it could force him to keep trying and breathing and _going_-

He was pale and motionless and breathing shallowly, but still alive, and Seifer felt some of his battle fever fade, pull back into wisps that cleared from his brain, that wiped murder from his heart, and revenge lust from his eyes.

And now all he had left was relief, and that fist holding his heart relaxed, just slightly.

"Hey. Hang on. You hear me, goddammit, Wuss? Don't be a fucking pansy." He was glad Dinct was not conscious, to hear the crack that broke his command; he wiped away another splatter of blood from that cold white chin.

A flare of Thundaga like a swing of hammer blow blasted all the breath from his lungs.

He tipped backward and lost his balance, and his fall ended with a loud gunshot crack-

And his world went black around him.

* * *

><p>Rinoa let her fingers rest lightly against the small hump of pregnancy that was just starting to show like beginning pot belly, smiling.<p>

The porch swing gave her splinters if she didn't sit just right, and she had to constantly keep re-adjusting herself every time a new stab of loose wood poked her somewhere unpleasant.

She didn't mind.

She pushed off lightly with her toes, making the swing rock forward with an ominous creak.

Overhead, fingers of sunrise began to smother the faint pinprick glow of stars still clinging stubbornly to the sky. At her feet, Angelo gave a soft thud of a tail wag, cocking one ear in Rinoa's direction.

Streamers of pink trailed like jet burner afterglow through the clusters of contusion black just beginning to break apart in that sky. She spent a long, long time staring up at it, letting each shove of her foot push her up higher, arc her out further, wondering if Squall was staring up at this same sky.

If he was thinking about her.

She folded her fingers over their child, and tipped her head back against the swing, closing her eyes.

When she did this, her entire life flashed before her eyes, multilayered slide show, nineteen years of existence crammed into one flicker of an eyeblink, teeth chatter vibration that buzzed inside her skull. Housefly drone, thickening into dull throttle-rev roar.

Selphie smiling and Squall's face in the dark, Irvine with that hat pulled low over his eyes and shoulder-slung rifle glinting in dazzling noon glow-

Quistis holding her together in the infirmary, at the funeral, benevolent mother smile that she clutched at, grasped for like oxygen, Zell using a stack of unfiled library books as an impromptu T-board ramp-

She watched them all in a semisecond fluctuate of changing faces and undertone hum of altering voices, high and then low, falsetto and then bass, circling, circling, circling, until the creak of the swing and Angelo's low questioning whine disappeared, until it all blurred together, ran together, smearing like Time Compression, becoming something else-

_-orbis terrarum mos intereo panton exuro liberi the world will die everything burns children orbis terrarum mos intereo panton exuro liberi the world will die everything burns children- _

-_abyssus parvulus abyssus memor mihi abyssus parvulus abyssus memor mihi abyssus parvulus abyssus memor mihi abyssus parvulus abyssus memor mihi abyssus parvulus abyssus memor mihi _

_-hello child hello remember me-_

Pressure built and strained and surged like a wave inside her head-

_-hello child hello child hello child remember me-_

She slumped forward with a shriek that became a fizzle of whimper, and Angelo was standing, nudging her hand, but she couldn't feel wet concerned nose press or jagged wood fragment stabbing through her shirt and into her back-

There was just headache pressure squeeze, bulging, scraping, _burning burning burning_-

_-thought you could forget me parum meretricis little whore little _bitch _I'm always here you can't forget don't forget operor non alieno-_

The voice crawled like maggots inside her brain, squirming through wormholes of gangrene-drilled puncture marks, taking and eating and draining until Rinoa Heartilly began to fade away, to drain out like water through a sieve-

And then, suddenly, it was all gone.

And there was just the high fear whimper of her faithful uncomprehending pet, and the brittle bone crack of swaying porch swing.

She put her feet down, and the swing stopped creaking.

Red like new bloodstain had begun to shine through the clouds.

* * *

><p><em>-seifer come play with us said the shadows we won't tell anyone-<em>

_-seifer seifer seifer here's your mother's head do you like it we'll put it on a pike don't you want to do that don't you want to fuck her in the eye sockets so she can watch so she can understand what it feels like we won't tell promise promise promise-_

He surfaced from his dreams with that drowning victim's gasp, his hands becoming claws and his sheets becoming twists of ligature around his legs.

He didn't know where the fuck he was.

His head pounded like a stutter of jackhammer.

His eyes blurred and refocused and smeared haze across his vision again and he was stumbling through that gunmetal cloud vapor of Time Compression all over again, his footsteps echoing solitude back to him because he was all alone and he didn't _want _to be he wanted someone anyone he wanted his _mother_-

A flash of blonde from one corner glared like sunlight in his eyes, and slowly, slowly, he let the room around him resolve into solid v's of angle-cut wall corner and dull brass shine of standard waiting room chair.

Quistis set her book down. "We weren't sure you were going to wake up. You hit your head very hard." Something rigid in her face eased, like a fist unclenching, and a tentative flicker of smile that did not reach her eyes pulled at her lips.

Seifer rubbed unconsciousness like adhesive from his eyes, blinking up into the actinic glare of examine room light fixture.

"Seifer?" Quistis stood up, her hands coming forward to lace like a shield in front of her. "Are you all right?"

He draped an arm across his eyes, trying to tamp down that fucking light, squeezing his eyes shut until it was just a thin heat shimmer of red along the edges of his lashes. "What the fuck happened?"

"You were injured. Someone hit you with a thunder spell, and you decided to cushion the landing with your head. Which, it seems, is fortunate; you have a very hard head." She tried out the smile again, but it didn't work, so she let it drop, let it sag, until silence so loud it became a roll of thunderstorm between them crawled inside his eye sockets, and hissed like static inside his head.

"I mean with Ze-" His tongue tripped and his throat seized shut and he couldn't breathe, he couldn't fucking twitch a single goddamned muscle, because memory formed a battering ram of strike like a right cross to his jaw, and all he could recall, all he could _see_-

-watercolor trickle of internal bleed-out and broken doll neck flop-

His throat became a pinhole. He let some of his old snarl leak into his voice, because it was the only way he could disguise the rasp in his voice. "With _Wuss_. What happened to him?"

It took her so long to reply that he peeled his eyes open and sat up, too fast; the room spun like morning-after hangover.

And then she swallowed very visibly and looked away, and Seifer tried to brace himself on that cold metal slab with its tissue paper layer of sterile parchment sheet.

He had tried so _fucking hard_. He'd have given his whole goddamned life in one final blaze of glory stand, throwing away everything-the cautious hope she had begun to nurture inside his chest, and those blue eyes he went to sleep thinking about, _everything _for that asshole in the screaming moment of wake-up call realization that was Zell Dincht, slack and silent and dying in his arms.

It was just-

He blinked, and then blinked again.

That little shit, stupid crybaby _asshole_-

He'd given Seifer a chance. Even when he hadn't wanted him to, even when he had done everything possible to ensure that he didn't-

He'd done it anyway, and Seifer hadn't been good enough to save him.

His gut shrink-wrapped itself around his spine, and he sat staring down at his hands.

"Zell…hasn't been found. Among the bodies."

Seifer's head came up.

"The area has been scoured; the military's still doing clean-up right now, and everyone has been accounted for except him. It's assumed that he was…captured."

His stomach became a skein of nausea inside him. "They're going to try and use him to figure out where Rinoa's hiding."

Quistis nodded. "I assume so. And when they realize he doesn't know anything-" Her face went bleached bone pale.

His stomach flopped and coiled and turned back on itself to stab him. Fuck him fuck him _fuck him_. "He does know." Seifer jerked a hand through his hair, his fingers finding bandage wrap that itched like new-healing scar at the back of his head. "I let it fucking slip to him that Rinoa's with Raijin and Fujin."

Quistis' face lost even more color. "What?"

"He doesn't know where, but he knows who she's with. It doesn't fucking _matter_-he'll never last a fucking hour of some shitheel interrogating him, Trepe. He was-" Pleading with his eyes, begging like the crybaby Seifer had always accused him of being because he didn't want to die, and those eyes and that tremble of lip quiver still went through him like a goddamned thrust from his gunblade-

And so he just sat there without finishing his sentence, watching that dribble of gore over and over and over again, feeling that nub of handle poking out from his friend's back like it had gone through his own and slid all the way into his gut.

"If he's alive-"

"He's not." Seifer said harshly; he rubbed his hands across his face, and suddenly he didn't have the energy, the willpower to take them away, and he slumped over with his palms indenting his eyes.

"We don't know that for sure." Quistis said softly, and he felt her hand touch his shoulder, very lightly.

He shrugged it off. "He's fucking _gone_. If he didn't get medical attention within a few minutes after I went down, he's fucking dead. Get it, Instructor?" He let his teeth show in an ugly sneer that she recoiled back from. "They probably dumped him somewhere along the way. He's someone's fucking fertilizer now."

"Seifer-"

He could feel something building like his mother's poison inside him, except this was a surge of busted-dam heat that prickled along the edges of his lashes, trying to spill over, and when she touched him this time, a shoulder twitch of a shrug was not enough; he grabbed her hand in his and threw it off him, and then he came to his feet in a surge like striking rattler.

She crossed her arms.

"Get out."

"No." Quistis unlaced one of her arms to reach out toward him, her fingers a light cool brush across his forearm, so soft he barely even felt it. "Seifer, I know you're afraid for him."

He turned his back on her and glared sullenly at the far wall.

"But until we know for sure, I will assume he is alive, and in the hands of the enemy. And I'm going to find him." she said quietly.

Smoke from his burning heart gathered between his ears. "Get _out_."

She sighed, and he heard a rustle of clothing as she shifted from one foot to the other, and then another low exhale. "I let Selphie go. I didn't get there in time, and she died. I'm not letting that happen again. Not to me, to Irvine-to any of us. We're all-" She almost smoothed the hitch in her voice in time, but not quite. "We're all that's left." she said softly.

The door clicked quietly shut behind her.

He had to blink again.

* * *

><p>Laguna had never seen Kiros Seagill cry before.<p>

He did when they brought Ward in.

Laguna did not.

He could only stand there, staring.

It was as though the entire floor beneath him had become a network of roots that all reached up simultaneously to grab him, to pin him, and he couldn't twitch even a single muscle, not the stiff immobile fibers of his limbs, hanging limply at his sides, and not the stalled lump of unmoving tissue that was his heart.

The only things that moved, that jolted and shuddered and turned over inside him, were his thoughts.

And they did not make any sense.

What his eyes were seeing, this neural response they triggered in his brain, this feedback from his pupils that cross-wiped like movie scene shift across his entire mind, blotting out everything else-

It couldn't be real. His brain had misinterpreted what he was seeing, that was all.

Because it could not be studying Ward Zabac with his neck torn open, trailing plaits of shivering vein like rope braid. Because his eyes, his brain-they just weren't correctly interpreting that massive chest, which was somehow giving the illusion that it wasn't moving. Which was somehow tricking the lights and shadows and slivers of sunrise that leaked in through the window to his left into pitching and yawing just right, so that it appeared his friend was dead.

So that Laguna's heart forgot to keep beating, and his lungs could not remember to keep breathing.

So that Ellone, standing between them, turned away with her hands over her face.

Those slivers of sunrise spread blood like the gore that had stopped dripping out of him a long time ago, that had cauterized itself when his life went, and it painted his cheeks in artificial flush. It brought synthetic color to his thin rubbery corpse's lips, morgue cosmetic red that Laguna had always found distasteful.

And he just kept watching.

As Kiros and then Ellone trickled away, as the titanic still frame of Ward's body passed long out of his sight-

He just stood there, not moving or crying or blinking. Everything inside of him had hardened, had congealed into a layer of frost that rimed him like first snowfall, and he didn't know what to do about it. He didn't understand how to process any of it, this scene that was still a tattoo across his malfunctioning eyes and brain, these organs that kept trying to make him accept that Ward Zabac was dead.

Except he wasn't.

Except he _couldn't be_.

Laguna stared up into the layer of approaching dawn draping the buildings of his city in bright crimson for a long, long time.

It was not until later, alone in his office, his elbow on his desk and one hand pressed to his forehead, that he began to weep.

* * *

><p>Seifer spent a long time alternating between staring at the ceiling and his hands; neither of them were very interesting, but neither was anything else in this fucking room where they were keeping him for observation to make sure his head injury wasn't going to kill him. It reeked of that special bouquet only hospitals seemed able to perfect, that cloying combination of shit and vomit death stench just barely held back by plug-in air freshner struggling valiantly to stay on top of it all, and he scowled as he picked at a new scab on one of his knuckles.<p>

He didn't fucking care if his head injury killed him. He was an asshole. He was a waste of fucking air-name one goddamned thing Seifer Almasy had ever managed to succeed at, to not liberally fuck up-

Nothing.

Not a goddamned thing.

He picked another scab.

He used to think, a long, long time ago, that those knights in those stories, those perfect shining examples of heroes were staggering, mind-blowing, just fucking swell-

But they were not him.

Because one day, he was going to surpass them all. One day, all those knights and princes and idol-worshipped heroes were going to pale in comparison to him; one day, they were going to venerate _him_, because the whole world was going to know who he was.

And it would love him, one way or another. It would kneel at his feet, even if he had to force it there screaming and crying and struggling all the way. One day, his mother's knights in her fairy tales would seem placid and boring and unimpressive next to him, her _little boy _who was a boy no longer, who was a man with a furnace for a heart. Into this furnace he put everything he didn't need, feelings that were not necessary, compassion that might stop him from shitting all over the little guy on his way to the top, insignificant bit player not good enough to lick his fucking feet-

Love, because he did not need to love the world for it to love him.

Because it wasn't useful, because he was doing just fine without it, and it was for pussies like Wuss or Pubes or that girly-faced cowboy, anyway. The Seifer Almasys of the world loved themselves, and that was enough.

And his mother. His mother loved him. His mother _believed _in him; she always had, even when he had been nothing more than a daydreaming little shit on her beach, waving his too-tall stick sword like it was the real thing. Like he could use it to slay dragons and rescue princesses from castles and inspire other asshats of little boys to copy him, to argue over who got to be him during games of pretend.

And what the fuck had it all come down to, in the end? Dreams of grandeur and fame, of glory, splintered around him. Blue and bright and shining like Zell Dincht's eyes, staring up at him, begging Seifer to live up to his boasts just this one time, to _save _him.

But he hadn't. He'd fumbled the fucking ball again.

And one of the real heroes got to take his death. Again.

He'd known the stories were shit, had figured that out a long time ago. He had just never realized how truly fucking _wrong _they were, because there was a small stupid part of him that was just like his mother, who had gone to her death hoping he'd get the happy fucking ending she somehow still believed in.

He wanted to believe in that happy ending too, you know? Even if it wasn't his. Even if it belonged to Dincht or the cowboy or even Leonhart, because he got that he'd blown it. He understood he'd already taken a shit all over his own chance. He just wanted to know that somehow, someway, it was out there.

For Quistis.

His heart seized up.

He had decided, in his hours long contemplation of his hands and the ceiling, to give her up.

If he'd ever even really had her in the first place.

He just-

He wanted the storybook ending for her, if it existed. And she'd never find it with him, because in this twisted reverse of the world Seifer had grown up believing in, the villain somehow kept stumbling through it all, more broken and twisted and distorted than before, but still functioning, still _alive _somehow, and the heroes-

They died. Not brilliantly or boldly or beautifully, sacrificing themselves for the greater cause-they just fucking _went out_, and all he could do was slink along the edges of their funerals knowing he did not even deserve to be there, because it should have been him in that coffin.

It should have been him, disappearing silently piece by piece by piece under that childhood beach.

Someone opened the door, and he didn't try to hide his scowl; that fucking nurse, the one he'd already tried to sneak past twice, a heinous panface of a bitch with at least three chins-he'd counted; he didn't have anything better to do-and the clipboard she wielded with less accuracy than Kadowaki, but more enthusiasm.

He looked up to see Irvine Kinneas step inside, Hyperion cradled across one arm.

He shut the door behind him, and took a seat in the chair Quistis had vacated several hours ago. The gunblade slid down across his knees, balancing there like his hat, picked wordlessly up off his head to perch on one knee like a silent faceless spectator to whatever was about to follow.

His beheading, probably.

He cracked his knuckles nervously.

Irvine stretched his long legs out in front of him, and crossed them at the ankle.

The silence that gathered between them pushed painfully down on Seifer's chest, dropped bench press that crushed every cubic centimeter of air from his lungs. He looked back up at the ceiling, because he had nowhere else to look.

Because there was nowhere else he _wanted _to look, because the only thing Irvine's eyes could tell him was what he had already figured out for himself; that Zell was dead because he hadn't been good enough to save him, that if it had been anyone else, _any _single fucking person who was not Seifer fucking Almasy-

Zell would probably be sitting in here now. He would probably be poking and prodding and setting off all the flashing machines crammed into this stark little closet of a room until the nurses kicked him out, waving cheerfully as he went.

There was a knot as cold and hard and bitter as the lump in his throat inside his gut, and it sat there like a boulder, waiting for him to slowly smother on it.

Irvine stood the gunblade up with a low pig squeal of a screech that hurt his ears, and offered him the pommel. "Thought you might want this back."

He still couldn't look at the man as he slowly wrapped all ten of his fingers around it, folding his hands like a prayer around that cold blood-stained handle resinous with something that was probably brain matter.

"I saw what you did for Dincht."

He kept his head bowed and his shoulders hunched, bracing himself for that axe swing of grief he knew was coming, that anvil blow of memory that was Zell Dincht's head sagging with a wet slap of blood splash down on his chest. "Didn't do a whole fucking lot, did it?" He didn't try to keep the bitterness out of his voice, because he knew there was nothing that could do that.

"You tried. You risked your life; can't ask for anything more than that. I-" Irvine paused, looking down at his hat now, curling his fingers up and around the brim in a spasm of a grip that crumpled it in his hand. "Used to think you were a real dick, Almasy." He let a soft smile flicker ghost-rapid across his lips, and then it was gone again. "Well, I ain't gonna' deny I'm still pretty sure you're an asshole. But Dincht's my best friend, and you almost got your ass killed trying to save him. Never thought I'd see you do that for anyone; always thought there was nothing more important to you than what you saw in the mirror, you know?"

Once upon a time, that had been true. And he still wished it fucking was, he still wanted it to be the only thing that mattered, because all this other shit, Zell bleeding to death in his arms, Quistis somewhere behind him doing the same for all he knew-it all fucking _hurt_.

Seifer said nothing.

"He ain't dead, you know."

This brought Seifer's head up and started a low banked fire inside his chest, just behind his heart. He was breathing in its fucking cinders, and they burned his throat, seared his eyes, and now he had to sit there fucking blinking again like the over-emotive asshole he was becoming.

"I couldn't get through to him, but I could see him; one of those pricks that took you down cast somethin' high level on him before they carried him off-Curaga, looked like. They wanted him alive. And Quisty an' I-we're going to make sure he stays that way. Thought you might want to help with that."

Seifer kept looking down at Hyperion, at the long thin line of his reflection staring back at him through old blood like corrosion. They didn't even have a fucking clue where to _start_-

But he was alive. He was fucking-his chest tightened and his heart gave a painful thump of a pulse flicker, a reminder it was still working after all-_alive_, goddammit.

He almost might have categorized this spreading in his chest, this motherfucking _heat_, as the warm and fuzzies, if he hadn't known better. If he hadn't already learned a long time ago that he wasn't capable of those kinds of feelings, of those sorts of sensations, he might have believed that was a kindling of hope inside his breastbone.

All for that idiot Chicken Wuss.

Who'd a fucking thunk?

"Yeah." Seifer said, very slowly and carefully. "I think I might be able to help you with that."

Irvine slipped his hat back down over his head, adjusting it to the precise angle it always leaned at, tipped just so. His duster fluttered as he stood, and there was a very faint glimmer of the old Kinneas in him now, the Casanova prick with his pretty eyes and girl hair and lip curl of like-to-fuck-me-wouldn't-you certainty that had always pissed Seifer off. The worst part of it had been women always just ate it right the fuck up, proving that damn eye twinkle right, and he'd spent a lot of time blurring fantasies together, until Squall's sissy little face splattering up against the wall courtesy of his hand became Irvine's, until they were both just one long smear of pretty boy nose and lip and perfectly chiseled chin point across the wall. "Well, Mr. Almasy, be seein' you around."

"Hey." Seifer called out to Irvine's retreating back. He suddenly found his hands very interesting. "That thing with Mess-Selphie…" He scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck, frowning, not sure how to phrase what he needed to say.

Irvine spent a long, long time in the doorway, not turning around, his shoulders stiff and tight with pain and his voice a low harsh scrape of gravel when he finally spoke. "It's in the past, man."

The door shut soundlessly behind him.

* * *

><p>Each day he stood at that convergence of ocean and beach, a boundary line of wet gleaming foam in the sand, willing himself to walk forward.<p>

Each day his child's voice called him back.

_-fucking coward-_

_-you disgust me old man-_

It made him stop. It made him think about that boy who used to ride his shoulders with a gleeful shriek and a sharp yank of his hair that he didn't mind, not if the boy was having fun.

Not if it meant the boy would never grow up to be what Garden had twisted him into years later, the broken shell of a human being that faced him like he was just one more enemy in an endless procession of them, skeleton man to skeleton man.

And all Cid had wanted to say, all he had been to afraid to say, was how very, very sorry he was. How extremely, completely _devastated _he was that the little boy standing on his doorstep holding Matron's hand and looking up at him with very wide, very green eyes was gone. That he would no longer let Cid reach out to tousle his hair the way he used to, the way stubborn little Seifer Almasy had always loudly insisted he hated and then complained just as noisily when Cid did it to Squall instead.

He stared down at the little trickles of wave crawling between his toes.

The surf resolved into a picture, green sea breaker and golden sand marrying together like a finished jigsaw, the last piece sliding neatly into place.

* * *

><p>Orphanage<p>

Centra

15 Years Ago

"Seifer." Cid put both hands on his hips, and glared down with mock severity. "Give Zell his cookie back."

"Didn't take it." the little blonde mumbled, wiping crumbs from his mouth. The crooked splay of baby teeth in the process of slowly replacing themselves showed brown around the edges, the same shade as the smears across his palms.

Cid tried not to smile. Both boys were partial to chocolate chip, resulting in some truly fantastic battles between the two of them; Zell, usually not nearly so aggressive as the smaller boy, became an entirely different child whenever his food came under threat, which was often whenever Seifer was around.

"Really?"

"Yep. Can I go play now?"

"No!" Zell shrieked. "He took my cookie!"

"Matron made a lot of cookies, Zell. I'm sure she'll be willing to give you another, if you ask nicely."

"No!" he shrieked again, and Cid tried not to wince. The boy was positively ear-splitting. "I wanted _that _cookie!"

"Too late, stupid head! I ate it nyah nyah!" Seifer spun in a blur of flailing arms and legs that somehow became a dead sprint to the front door, his stick awkwardly banging the floor with each step. Zell followed him with another scream, already beginning to cry, one chubby little hand making frantic swipes for the trailing point of Seifer's 'sword' (blunted after a particularly nasty poking that had been inflicted on Squall,) both boys nearly crashing into Quistis, who was just coming through the door with a book in her hand.

"Hey!"

"Outta' my way, Quisty!" Seifer yelled, pushing her rudely aside.

She hit him in the head with her novel, several good, hollowly echoing strikes that she carried out gleefully while Seifer tried to block her with his stick sword, Zell clinging to one of his legs further complicating the whole ordeal, until Cid had to wade in between them all.

"All right; everyone be nice to each other."

"He stole _my cookie_!"

"Ow! Cid, Quisty just hit me in the boy place!"

"Seifer pulled my hair!"

"I only did that 'cause you hit me in the _boy place_, you poop face!"

"Seifer." Cid folded his arms and injected sternness into his voice. "We do not call names."

"Just did."

"Spank him, Cid!" Quistis suggested happily.

"_No_!" Zell screamed, apparently not finding this to be an appropriately horrible enough punishment for his foster brother's crimes.

"Matron said we weren't s'pposed to hit each other, so Cid can't spank me or he'll get in _trouble_."

"I think it should be ok if _you're _the one getting hit." Quistis pointed out pragmatically. She smiled brightly up at Cid, her big blue child's eyes corner crinkling the same way his wife's did when the children made her laugh. "I won't tell Matron if you spank him, Cid."

Seifer lunged while her attention was re-directed, and licked the side of her face, his hands clamping her shoulders, holding her firmly in place as she opened her mouth in a scream that rivaled Zell's, twisting and bucking and _wrenching _at him, like Seifer was all the monsters he had ever bragged about slaying all condensed into one green-eyed little boy.

"Now you have _boy cooties_!" he pronounced this like a death sentence, and then slipped past her before she could retaliate, the screen door slamming behind him.

Quistis kept screaming.

* * *

><p>Orphanage<p>

Centra

Present Day

It was only a short memory, just a brief interlude of sound and sight and fist clench compression of the heart, because seeing them all like that, young and innocent and unmarked-

It reminded Cid just how far they had fallen. It reminded him just how far he had _made them fall_. Selphie in her coffin, surrounded in the semicircle curve of those who had loved her, Seifer at his wife's side, lunacy like a sheen of illness ruining his big bright child's eyes-

Cid closed his own.

The ocean was singing to him in his wife's voice.

Sometimes, he wondered if the war hadn't caused irreparable damage to his mind. Because sometimes, sitting in that dusty old recliner facing this beach he and his wife had raised their children on, this beach he curled his toes into now, he could hear her.

He could hear them all.

And if he squinted his eyes just so, if he took off his glasses and let the entire world blur into a semi-haze like heat mirage-

There was Quistis, bossy, know-it-all Quisty sprawled on the front porch with her chin in her hands and a book open in front of her. Zell, retreating shrieking through the waves from the gleeful slash and hack of Seifer's splintered knight's sword.

Selphie and Irvine, slouched down beside Quistis describing sprays of crayon scribble across the sheets of paper Matron had handed to them with a smile.

And Squall, silent, lonely little Squall alone on a hump of sand dune that glinted aureate shimmer like the farthest spectrum of a rainbow, wavering on the edge of primary red.

He dipped a toe into the surf, and tried to make his legs move, to bend and straighten and bend and straighten until the sea became a cauldron around him, swirling higher and higher and higher until he did not have to see or think or hear or _survive _anymore.

And still, there was his son's voice calling him back.

_-fucking coward fucking coward fucking coward fucking coward fucking coward fucking coward fucking coward-_

And Cid stopped, he let his hands become fists against his sides and he _froze_, stalled like every muscle had suddenly, simultaneously stopped functioning_-fucking coward you disgust me you disgust me fucking coward-_

He could not discover a reason why his child was wrong.

He had raised them, had doted on and protected and sheltered them all like Edea had given birth to them herself, like these were all really his own precious sons and daughters and not borrowed stand-ins of the children his barren wife would never be able to give him-

And then he had _forged _them. He had fed them into the machine that was Garden and spit them out the other side in an assembly line of deindividualized commerce, walking talking retail for rent to the highest bidder. For a profit. Because they were _worth _something to him. Because he had let himself forget all the consequences that went hand in hand with sending children to war; because he had let himself believe, for a while, that he was not really sending them to their deaths, that these sons and daughters of his, these pre-pubescent youths playing soldier until the day they were needed-

Their sacrifices were necessary, were _unavoidable_ because these were the liberi fatali, his fated children, and one day the world would need them. One day they would rise up like the heroes of the stories his wife used to read them, and slay a monster. And they would not die. They would not suffer.

But the story had stumbled, had gotten off on the wrong foot right from the very beginning, had skipped a page, mis-printed a word, a sentence, a paragraph.

Because his wife was the monster.

And her children-

They hadn't even understood what they were really destroying.

He stared down into this ocean that sounded like her voice, and he listened to his son.

Who was right.

Who had painted the most unflattering picture of Cid Kramer he had ever had to confront, including his own self-portrait. He had thrown his children unprotected into the world, shoved them screaming from the nest to fly or die horribly, and he had forced them to survive. To sacrifice their souls, if necessary.

And now it was all too _hard _for him? Now he could simply not go on, even though he had urged them all to do just that? Now he was giving up, going home to his wife and her arms and her smile and her gentle head nod of matriarchal wiseness-

And he was leaving them. Abandoning them.

He took a step backward, and then another.

On a beach that still sounded like his children sometimes, if he listened hard enough, a broken old man decided to start living again.


	20. Chapter 18

**A/N: I do apologize for the delay in updating. I got busy working on the last chapter of this fic last weekend and by the time I was done, it was too late to edit and post chapter 18. Thanks to everyone for their reviews, and Angie, I do not mind fanart based off this at all-if it's posted online I would appreciate links though, if you're willing to provide them. I draw a little; I'm not terribly proficient at it, but I do enjoy it, and I love to see others' work. Oh, and just to let everyone know, there are five more chapters to be posted after this and then a short epilogue, and this beast of a fic will finally be over. Go ahead and breathe your sighs of relief now. ;)**

**Chapter Eighteen**

Presidential Palace

Esthar

Three days later, Squall arrived.

She was sitting between Irvine and Seifer on Laguna's beaten-up couch, picking sprays of stuffing that leaked from puncture wounds of moth-eaten age, when suddenly the door to his office opened.

He stood in the doorway looking at them all, one hand on Lionheart and no expression on his face, mannequin blank, his back a perfect ramrod line of soldier's inspection.

His voice when he spoke was a dry cinder block scrape of a rasp, inflectionless. "I'm here to help you get him back."

Laguna, halfway out of his chair with the kind of rapturous hope on his face that made Quistis' heart curdle in her chest, sat slowly back down. She watched him compose himself piece by piece, first his desperate shining eyes, alight with so much hopeless love for his son they lit up his entire face, and then the jaw drop of his disbelief that he had to wind back up into a politician's fake gleaming smile, not too over-the-top.

But he was a lousy politician, and everything seeped through anyway, twisting her stomach.

Laguna cleared his throat, gesturing across from him. "Have a seat."

"I'll stand." Squall said brusquely.

"You're just in time." Irvine drawled, flicking his brim in a short little tip of an acknowledgement. "Almasy and me here were just spellin' out our plan for everyone."

"It isn't a _plan_." Quistis insisted tightly, crossing her arms. "It's ridiculous; it is an _adlib_, and it may very well get us all killed."

"No one wants you there anyway." Seifer informed her with a sneer. "Kinneas and I can take care of this ourselves. And Leonhart." He nodded briefly in Squall's direction, not sparing even a flicker of a glance for his rival.

"Zell's life is on the line. I am not sitting around on my hands waiting for all of you to come back, or more likely, to _not _come back. We need a solid, coherent plan with at least a decent chance at success. This is not it."

"I'm open to suggestions, Quisty. You're welcome to throw somethin' in."

"What's the plan?" Squall demanded coldly, cutting her next protest off.

Seifer leaned forward, lacing his hands between his knees, propping both elbows on his thighs. "T. Garden's got SeeDs out there with the civilians; I recognized one of the fuckers closing in on me and Wuss. Kinneas recognized some of the bodies too, except these were from G. Garden. The computer system here went down a few days ago and nobody could get through to Odine to fix it, so Trepe and I tried to pay him a visit at his lab, and he had two G. Garden cadets guarding it; wouldn't even let us through into the main lab."

Irvine picked up the thread of Seifer's explanation. "No reason for Galbadian soldiers to be in there; somethin's fishy; we got nothing else to go on, no idea where they took him. We're going there for answers, see if those cadets can't help us out a little. Figure we surprise 'em, we can take 'em down real fast before anyone inside realizes what's goin' on. We leave someone behind with them, make sure they don't wake up an' raise the alarm or something, and hit the main lab with an advance team, find out what the hell they're hidin'. Might be totally unrelated, but Galbadians in Esthar are never a good thing; big coincidence for them to be acting separately. We find something, we go from there. If not, we see if those cadets aren't feelin' a little chatty."

Seifer's smile twisted his face into something ugly.

Qusitis gave him a very cold look. "We don't have a clue what is beyond the entrance; there could be more of them inside, for all we know. The element of surprise is only so useful when you're ridiculously outnumbered."

"Or maybe it's just that fucking little weirdo in there, and he's got Wuss strung up by his toes doing some kind of experiment on him."

"This is _not_-"

"When do we move out?" Squall asked quietly, interrupting her again.

Quistis rubbed the bridge of her nose violently. There was no use in trying to confront the stupidity of men with rationality; their selective hearing simply dismissed it before they could even begin to process it. "We do _not_, until we have a more cohesive strategy."

"Well, coming up with a more 'cohesive strategy' might get Wuss killed." Seifer snapped. "We don't have time. Who knows what they're doing to him right now, _Instructor_? We don't have time to sit around and pick our fucking asses." He stood up with a soft crack of trench coat billow, slapping up against his boots. "We go as soon as it gets dark."

Quistis followed him out the door and into the hall. "_Seifer_!"

"Yes, Your Highness? What would you like me to do now? Sit up? Roll over? Beg?" He jerked his elbow out of the hand she stretched out to touch it. "Get over your fucking self, _Instructor_. The cowboy and I are doing this whether it gets the Quistis Trepe stamp of approval or not. Deal with it."

"Seifer, saving a friend is one thing. Running blindly to your deaths is another. Getting yourselves killed isn't going to help Zell."

"I don't give a shit what happens to me." He kept going without looking back at her, his spine very straight and tall and stiff, his hair a halo of mid-noon sunlight beneath the lights that passed overhead.

"_I _do." she snapped.

He stopped.

He turned around to face her, very slowly.

His smile was a taut bitter twist of a thing, a curvature that effected just the very edges of his lips. "Not as much as you care about what happens to Wuss. I'll bring him back, Trepe, whatever I have to do. I'm tired of fucking up. This gets to be my fucking redemption, get it? You want to take that away from me?"

Her heart gave a feeble twist, like an exhausted kill trying to pry itself free of playful predator claws. She stood looking far, far up into his face, that bitter snarl of mouth and ragged scrawl of scar line-

And something inside her chest gave. Something that heel-toed toward world-changing, a fractional crack of a thing like hairline fracture; she didn't want to probe it, because a part of her could guess what it was, or at least what it would become, and so instead she simply stood pretending it had not broken, staring up at him until his brows came together in a frown and he looked away with an expletive that made her wince. "No one expects you to die to prove you're not the enemy anymore, Seifer." Quistis told him softly.

His arms came up across his chest and his frown went deeper.

"Just _think _about this a little more, please." She touched his forearm carefully, like he might bite her. "You don't have to-"

"I take back what I said." He said it completely calmly, utterly neutrally, but a shiver of jaw muscle twitch jumped in the side of his face, giving him away.

"Excuse me?"

Seifer began walking again. "The balcony; everything I said up there. I take it back."

"I-" Quistis blinked. Ache like a knurl of cancer tumor tied itself in a knot inside her chest, and she blinked again. She looked away, tightening her eyes behind her glasses, making them into slits, as though this could somehow brace her for whatever he was gearing up to stab her with.

"You were right. I was just trying to get into your pants all along, Instructor. I'm a real prick like that. So don't worry about whether or not I come back; we're not getting the fairytale anyway. Just stay here; Leonhart and the cowboy and I will take care of this. You can make a voodoo doll of me or some shit and sit in your room and stab it."

It didn't hurt as badly as she'd expected; he didn't lie very well. Quistis ran a hand over her face, sighing. "Seifer, please stop. You're a horrible liar."

"Really?" he snapped. "You were all fucking ready to believe that before."

_"I know you are drunk, and that you've never had the slightest interest in any woman-including myself-beyond getting them in your bed." _

Once upon a time she had tried to make herself believe that, because it was more acceptable, it was _less dangerous _than what he was trying to clumsily offer her instead. She hadn't wanted it, because she had seen what it had done to her friends, because she had wanted to remain safe inside her books, fictional world spans of life and death and love and hate that could touch but not scorch her, that she could quietly shut away if it all became too much.

Real life was a nightmare you could never wake up from. Smoke haze and severed finger joints flame-curled into a clench of black-veined fist, and chest cavity like open spewing caldera-

These might have been novel-painted images laid down like a flick of stippling across the blank canvas of fertile reader minds, visceral make believe, vivid and yet still imaginary-

And yet they weren't. She could not quietly thumb past this scene or skip that paragraph because they disturbed her. Because these scenes, these flowing scripts of evocative narrative were her life, her soldier's existence, and there wasn't any room in them for a happy ending.

There certainly wasn't any room for Seifer Almasy, and yet persistently, inevitably, just the way he did everything, he kept trying to shove himself in, to wedge himself between the cracks and faultlines variegating her control.

She did not _want _this. And she did not pretend to understand it, not when her scholar's mind very meticulously and rationally laid out all the reasons why she should not let this man slip himself like a blade into her heart. Why she should pivot, put all her military training into the crispest, most perfectly-executed about-face she had ever performed, and walk away.

And yet she didn't.

And yet she kept following him, all the way down the serpentine s curve of polished hallway to his room, where he paused at the door with his hand on the knob, his broad proud back still to her.

He opened the door.

Quistis stepped in after him. "Seifer, if we take a little more time on this, if we plan it out and think it through _rationally_, then no one-"

He turned to her with something that was not a smile, that shot tendrils of dread like fronds of cold slimy sea creature limb down into her gut. "Come on, Instructor. You know I never do anything like that. Remember Deling? I don't need a plan. I like to just make shit up as I go along."

"Yes, and look how well _that _turned out."

"I'm not your fucking student anymore; you don't have any authority over me." He reached down to pick up Hyperion where it lay in a flat silver streak of mirror face over the navy blue of his bedcovers, and sat down with it across his knees.

"I'm higher ranking than you."

He ran a scrap of cloth he leaned over to pick up from the nightstand down the length of blade in his lap. "You're also all alone with me."

"Is that a threat?" She let a hard flat chill leak into her voice.

Seifer stared up at her with robotic bleakness, his eyes empty, depthless glass. Sea-polished bottle shard, staring back at her with nothing inside, and the silence that fell between them dropped like a hammer.

And then, without any warning at all, he was suddenly on his feet.

* * *

><p>He lunged and came up holding a fistful of her shirt collar.<p>

And this was what disturbed him most of all:

The pale cords of her throat tendons flinched like the shivers of death reflex that were corpses blinking eyes and cooling bodies giving one last headless poultry shudder of simulated life around him, and they reminded him of his mother's neck.

Her nervous twitch of a swallow that she tried to hide became his mother's echoing orgasm gasp, hitching in her throat and dribbling between her lips.

He heard a screech like a shriek of tortured metal as his teeth came together in a jaw clench that threatened to break them. She did not step back from his grasp or try to break it, maybe because she was afraid to lose this particular pissing contest or because she understood that he was not entirely, completely in control of himself at that moment.

He was still seeing his mother's neck, arched over him dripping long dark hair onto his bare chest.

He could make Trepe moan underneath him the way his mother had, and parts of him desperately fucking begged him to do it. He hadn't been laid in way too fucking long, and his pants had gone tight around his dick, his breath short between his teeth. He could have this scrap of a shirt in his hands off in just a second, his mouth on her breast, his tongue teasing her nipple into a peak just the way-

Seifer blinked. The smile that didn't belong to his mother anymore had superimposed itself across Quistis' pretty face.

A voice in the back of his head tried to persuade him to do it anyway. He might not even have to talk her into it; he might just let his hands and lips and tongue do all the persuading for him, until even prudish Instructor Trepe let loose all her tight-reined control, until she let him lay her back on the bed and rip those tight little uniform pants off, until the world became just the arc of her body curving up to meet his and the twists of sheet wadded into balls of spastic fist clench in his hands. Knowing Quistis, she was probably still a virgin, tight as hell, inexperienced but enthusiastic because fucking him would be just one more thing she had to excel at-

He could tell the precise moment she suddenly noticed him pressing up against her, because both cheeks suddenly went bright red.

Seifer stared at the up and down bob of her chest, picking up speed. Yeah, she might let him fuck her; maybe just because her body had begun to give into natural hormonal reaction and not because she gave a shit about him, but he could pretend, couldn't he? After all, he might not come back tonight-_she _might not come back. Fuck letting her go; for just this one stolen afternoon before he died, he could make himself believe he was fucking Quistis Trepe because they loved each other and she wanted one final moment to remember him by with nothing between them but skin and sweat and the shivering drum beat of accelerated pulses.

Because this rescue mission was a fucking suicide run; Odine's lab might be nothing, just harmless dead-end, but when they eventually found Zell-because they fucking would, if he never did another goddamned thing with his life-getting him away from Hyne knew how many Galbdians was a cluster fuck waiting to happen.

He tightened his hand on her collar.

"Seifer-"

"I might get killed, Trepe." he interrupted her, looking down at his hand on her shirt, the knots and tangles of scar tissue that were his knuckles going tension white. "But it doesn't matter. You know why, Instructor?" He let a little of the old Seifer soak through into his voice, the Seifer that had not kneeled but had instead forced others to their knees.

Because he was supposed to die; it was what happened to the villains at the end of all his mother's stories, and because he couldn't fuck her, because he could not stop watching himself panting above that bitch wearing Matron's face like fucking masquerade ball disguise.

"Because that's what happens to the bad guys, Quistis. Matron read you the same fucking stories; the monsters always got what was coming to them in the end, didn't they?"

She stared back at him for a very long time before replying. "Is that what you really believe? That you're a monster?"

"Tch." He let go of her shirt at last. "It's not about _believing _or not, Trepe. You read a fucking newspaper after the war ended? Watch a fucking news cast? It was all pretty clear who the heroes were. And who they weren't."

She sighed and shook her head. "Seifer, you aren't a monster. You were manipulated; so was Matron. No one is to blame for what happened except Ultimecia. _She _was the monster. You were pardoned for a reason; no one expects you to go on punishing yourself."

"I was pardoned because they didn't know what else to do with me." he snapped. "They thought it'd make them look bad if they killed me when everyone knew I was that cunt's little puppet-I was a 'victim' of the sorceress or some shit. If they killed me, people'd start wondering if everyone who was ever taken advantage of by one of them would get killed too just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. No one thought I was innocent. I _wasn't _innocent." He slumped back on his bed, breathing hard, squeezing his eyes shut like that could hold it all back, tidal surge of memory that smelled like her hair and lightning jag prickle of manicured razor nail, sliding inside his skin. "Sometimes I did it because she forced me too, but sometimes…." He pressed his hands to his face, slid them down hard like he could slough off everything she had ever done to him, everything he had ever _wanted _her to do to him. "Sometimes…I did it because I wanted to." He let his hands fall again, collapsing in the little v of open space between his knees, and these were what he focused on, these loose dangles of sweating palm like the slack puppet's hands of long ago, waiting for the twinge of feedback through his strings. "She used to make me dream about you. The orphanage, you know, when we were kids. Every fucking night, I watched all of you-Wuss, Cid, the cowboy, Pubes, fucking _everyone_, floating in the ocean like pieces of fucking driftwood. And then you'd all come out of the house, laughing at something, and I'd start killing everyone." He still couldn't look at her, even as he saw something shift out of the corner of his eye, amorphous shadow figure that he sensed lowering itself to his level. "Sometimes in the dream, she'd make me fuck you while I killed you. In the hole I'd just fucking opened with Hyperion, and you never died right away, you'd always-"

_-her plea is a thick wet gurgle of trachea flap that scrapes out words he cannot even understand anymore and he keeps going he keeps mindlessly thrusting and grunting and not wiping the tears from his eyes because the severed halves of her are too blood-slippery to loosen his grip and behind him his mother is laughing and laughing and laughing-_

He made his jaw hard and tight and still he could feel that fucking burning in his eyes, pushing itself in little clammy trickles down his cheeks, like fingertips with the fucking nails out as they ran down his face.

And he just sat there and let them, because if his arm came up, if he knuckled them away like he wanted to, like he fucking _needed _to, then she'd notice. And then why didn't he just cut his dick off? Why not just get himself a pair of tits to match the vagina he'd grown?

Her hands gently touched the back of his head, and then suddenly she was cradling his cheek against the front of her chest, stroking the hair at the nape of his neck.

His voice when he could speak was a hoarse stunted cough of a protest. "I don't want your fucking _pity_, Instructor."

"I'm not offering you pity, Seifer." Quistis said very quietly. "I'm offering you compassion. You did that for me once not very long ago."

His laugh came out a bitter snarl that wrenched his throat. "Yeah, nice; just what I always wanted. A little fucking bone thrown my way because you feel obligated to me because I didn't fuck you when you were sad about Messenger Girl kicking the bucket. You probably would have let me, you know. You women are real fuckin' slutty when you're vulnerable."

"I'm choosing to ignore the fact that you are acting like an ass because you are upset." she replied dryly. She smoothed a loose tendril of hair from his face. "If there isn't any way to talk you out of tonight, then at least promise me you won't do anything stupid. It isn't just your life on the line, Seifer. If we all die in some sort of botched rescue attempt, then so does Zell."

"Promise I'll play by the rules if you let me touch one of your tits." he mumbled into the front of her shirt, smiling even though he couldn't think of a single fucking reason why it was all that funny right now.

Quistis smacked him lightly across the top of the head.

And then she slid her hands around to his cheeks, and he sat there for a long, long time staring up at her as she cradled them between her palms, his tear tracks still wet and gleaming and just out there in the fucking open for her to see, and something inside him resisted this, bucked it, because Seifer fucking Almasy did not display weakness on his face for the whole fucking world to see-

He stomped it out. He crushed it like insectile wriggle in the dirt underneath his boot, and kept going.

He forgot to remember this as her mouth brushed his very lightly, just _there _enough to make him close his eyes, and try to find something inside of himself that still understood how to breathe correctly.

"Please," she whispered against his lips, "just be careful."

* * *

><p>"Would you…stay for a minute?"<p>

Irvine slipped out ahead of him, giving him a little nod over his shoulder.

Squall paused with his back to his father, going very stiff. "I heard about Ward." He shifted Lionheart where it had begun to dig into his hip, not turning around, his palms going sweat-slick and his throat going dry, his heart a turbocharged beat of hammer swing against his chest. "I'm-" He had to lick his lips, because he was not quite sure how to form his condolences, how to speak to this man who was his father and yet was not, who had left him all alone with a dead mother and a foster sister to be sent away to an orphanage with children whose parents at least had the excuses of being dead. Whose mothers and fathers would undoubtedly have kept them, had they still been alive.

He didn't understand what he had done to make his father not want him.

This was the question that formed a suppuration of open bleeding wound inside him, that made a slit like surgeon incision across his heart, and forgot to close it up. It closed his lips around the generic sympathy he had been about to offer, and choked him on the absinthal build-up of it.

Against his better judgment, Squall pivoted slowly around, flicking the curve of bang that shivered down over one eye out of the way.

Laguna tried to smile again, and again it did not work. He folded his hands like a prayer in front of him, and rested his chin on the shaking knot of them. "Squall-" He had to clear his throat, to hack a cough like a rasp of pneumonia clot into one hand before he could continue, and Squall had to look away from the naked pleading in his father's stare. "I didn't-I never knew about you until you were long gone. Ellone…Adel took her, and Ward and Kiros and I…" His voice hitched slightly on his friend's name. "We went after her. I didn't even know Raine…your mother…I didn't know she was pregnant. She didn't tell me, because she was afraid for Ellone and she didn't want me worrying about her. If I had known-" He dropped his head to stare down at his hands, to study them like somewhere within those pale surface traceries of vein and threads of old soldier's scars, there was an answer to all the pain that lay like a chasm between them. That might, someday, bridge the gulf Squall had carefully built between them, layering callus down over that open fester of untreated lesion.

He tightened his hand and his eyes, and he clenched a brutal squeeze of fist down over the slight weakening he could feel somewhere inside of him, reinforcing it with anger that seared it shut like a sloppy loop of cross stitch.

Politicians lied for a living; why should he believe anything this man said? Why should he for one single minute give him the benefit of the doubt, when he had never been there for Squall, when all he had ever been was _gone_, until suddenly his son was a legend, a hero, and the whole damn world wanted to shake his hand, to clap his back. Wouldn't that be just Hyne damned _wonderful _for his image?

Squall let bitterness screw his lips into a thin tight line that showed his father just how much he gave a damn about his stupid excuses, and spun back around.

"Whatever." he mumbled, and walked out the door.

* * *

><p>Irvine shot both men at point blank range, his rifle swinging up through a short arc like revolver quick-draw, and sending them both reeling backward twitching like epileptics mid-seizure.<p>

"The fuck is that thing loaded with?" Seifer asked, crouching beside one as Squall kneeled next to the man's partner, the corner of his lip curling up in distaste.

"Rubber bullets, like the cops use in riots, basically, 'cept with enough electrical charge in them to make a Ruby Dragon think twice about messin' with you. It's a modified round that delivers an electric shock strong enough to put down a full-grown man like you just nut punched the guy. Latest in non-lethal technology. Not usually my department, but we might need these boys to talk later."

"Yeah, well I think they need to reconsider the fucking charge in those things; this one shit himself." Seifer toed the man sharply in the ribs, lifting his body with the impact and then letting him rag doll back down onto the floor. "Out cold, though. Not bad, cowboy."

"Hurry up." Squall hissed. "Someone might have heard that."

Seifer and Squall each grabbed one by the arms and dragged both limp cadets out of the way of the doors, depositing them messily in one corner where Quistis promptly set to tying them together with her whip.

He scowled at her as she worked. "Now what the fuck are you going to do if there are more of them and someone doubles back to see what happened to these two?"

"Cut them with my razor wit." she suggested wryly.

"Ha ha, Trepe, real fucking funny; nice time for you to develop a sense of humor." he snapped.

"Or, I could simply take care of them with the gun in my bra." she replied calmly, straightening as she finished. "And no, you may not see it."

He did not look away from her eyes for a long time, until Kinneas nudged him with an elbow and someone-Pubes-mumbled something about using hand signals from here on out.

She gave him a little hint of a smile that squeezed his heart inside his chest, and it wasn't until Irvine nudged him again-more sharply this time-that he could remember how to move at all.

If he didn't-

Seifer blinked away the thought.

He just might possibly have something to come back to now, didn't he? Fuck this up, and that little trace of a smile was gone, out of reach to him when for the first time it might just possibly, one day, belong to him.

He wasn't that goddamned stupid.

Seifer let the suggestion of his old smirk pick up his lips, for just a moment, for just the semi second it took him to take in every detail of her, tip-tilted glasses she poked back into place even as he watched, and the unblinking regard of those blue, blue eyes he let be his last sight of her.

He turned around.

He didn't look back.

* * *

><p>The doors that hissed open around them emptied out into stagnant darkness backlit soft white by humming computer terminals. Seifer brought up the rear, Hyperion's pommel cold and clammy and bonding like ice to his palm, his twisting stomach pulsing bile up into his throat.<p>

Around them, capsules of semi-translucent glass held turquoise-colored liquid that shaped itself into the ripples of patterned siding it lapped up against, bringing Irvine in front of him to an abrupt halt that almost tripped him over the cowboy's lanky form.

"The hell is that?" Kinneas whispered.

Seifer clenched his jaw and poked him threateningly with the handle of his gunblade, wondering how much noise a kidney punch would make in the heavy quiet. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Squall motioned angrily to both of them, his face wearing that special contortion of constipated forehead wrinkle only Pubes seemed able to manage. Seifer sneered at him and jabbed Kinneas again, hissing a very specific threat that involved the point of his weapon and the cowboy's asshole; the shadowy obstruction in front of him didn't even twitch, making him think he hadn't actually heard it, or he was considerably less chicken shit than his pretty, pretty face would suggest.

Seifer doubted it was the latter.

"Keep moving, you idiot." he hissed. Squall made another gesture at him. "Well, listen, Pubes, I don't know the hand gesture for 'pull your head out of your fucking ass and get out of my way' so you can just kiss my ass. Besides, doesn't look like there's anyone here."

"'Cept them." Irvine tapped lightly on the glass, his finger chiming like distantly-rung bell against the smoked-glass curve he flattened his nose against, Exeter swinging down to dangle loosely at his side.

Seifer stepped up next to him.

Inside the tank, a dome of scalp-shaved skull cap yawned all the way open to the bone, wires like multihued tentacles lined up in neat little rows that marched all the way across the head down to the brow. Pale arms folded in a casket-laid corpse pose across an emaciated stick of a chest, tiny buds of pre-pubescent breasts showing underneath them. White lids tinged oxygen-deprived blue and tipped in long dark lashes stayed closed, but Seifer could see a shifting like REM twitch beneath them, and something that felt like his mother's nails crawled over his skin, trying to find an opening.

"What the fuck is this?"

"Creepy." Irvine whispered. "The hell is Odine doing here?"

Seifer frowned, watching his scar bunch up in the pale reflection of himself he could see in the glass. "Who knows what the fuck that weirdo's got going on. Doesn't matter right now, unless Wuss is in one of them."

"Yeah." Irvine stepped back. "Guess so. But still-these are just _kids_."

Squall signaled for them to get moving.

"I think we can drop the hand signals, Pubes."

Squall just glared at him.

"Tch. Whatever. Let's just take a look around, see what we can find, and then get the hell out of here and start interrogating those assholes out front." He let go of Hyperion to crack his knuckles. "You can have the one that shit himself, Pubes." He smiled, wondering if Leonhart could see his jangling nerves in the smirk he peeled his lips open in that probably more resembled death-stiffened corpse grin. Whatever, goddammit; he didn't have time to stand around and compare dicks with Leonhart. He already knew he'd win, anyway. Princess' loss, Quistis' gain. Maybe. If someone didn't shoot his ass off; if she didn't regain her sanity and remember that she wanted nothing to do with a damaged cast-off of a man that was barely even human anymore on the inside.

Shadows and pus pockets of memories; that was all his mother had left him.

He veered off into the center of the semi-circle that formed the ring of those eerie containers, little fluttering limbs of red and blue shifting all around him, like they were fucking waving at him or something. It gave him the creeps. He drew Hyperion as he walked, watching half a dozen Seifer Almasys splinter into distorted funhouse mirror images that rippled like he was right there in the water with those things.

Ultimecia probably would have gotten a kick out of this place. It was just as bat shit disturbing as that cunt.

Seifer trailed the point of his blade along the capsule nearest him with a pig-stuck squeal; he knew it was smarter to keep quiet, not draw any attention to himself, but the silence was just so fucking _oppressive_; it reminded him of his mother sitting in front of her mirror, chin lifted imperiously and her hands folded in front of her, waiting for him to beg before she began his punishment.

She'd always waited for his pleas before she started doing anything; sometimes he beseeched her to let him go, sometimes he asked her to fuck him in a thin quavering voice he didn't recognize as his own at all-it never mattered to his mother. If he wanted to shove his dick down so hard inside of her that it hurt them both, he'd get that, but not until he didn't want it anymore. Not until fucking her became the punishment itself, until all he could do was lie there underneath her silently letting his body betray himself and trying not to remember that once upon a time ago, this woman had fed him cookies warm from her oven.

He stopped in front of a seventh capsule set back from the others, the liquid in this tank a lurid column of bloodstain.

This one had hair.

Seifer watched it flicker in and out of that hematic gloom, tongue flicks of lightning bolt gold that made his eyes screw up in disgust.

A face bumped up against the glass, and he jumped back with a gurgle of strangled-off cry that might have been a woman's high-pitched shriek, if he hadn't stopped it in time.

A pair of eyes blinked open in that red-lit murk, and rolled back like marbles.

Oh shit. Shit shit motherfucking _shit_-

Seifer dropped Hyperion.

He threw his shoulder into the front of that pod with a linebacker's unflinching rush, bruising his socket, and when that didn't work, he did it again. "It's Zell! It's _Zell_, you fuckers; get over here and help me!" he screamed, hurling himself over and over into that curve of ripple-cut glass wall, his heart a sick wet lump in his throat and his pulse a swell of thunder in his ears, building toward a crescendo that drowned out everything else.

The carpet-muffled thump of approaching footsteps made it through that storm rumble in his ears, just barely.

And then they were taking him away, pulling him back, and someone had their arm across his throat and he didn't understand a single fucking thing, he didn't get what the _hell _they thought they were doing when that thin slit of a mouth inside the tank was trying to say something, spraying bubbles out the sides of his respirator as his jaw worked without sound and his eyes rolled like children's toys again-

"_Get off me_!" Seifer demanded, swinging his feet up to land both boots hollowly echoing off the glass, thrusting with his legs hard enough to uncoil that arm from his throat and the fingers that strained white against his wrist from his arm. He landed and spun, his coat flaring out around him like wings, his body between Wuss and these dicks like a shield, and the last thing he saw, the last image his mind offered him-

Was her face and that serene empathy look she gave him as she held his face between her hands, as she let her lips go soft and pliant and willing against his own-

And then muzzle flare like a burst of meteor shower came, and took it all away.

* * *

><p>Through the trickle of scalp wound that leaked throbbing red down into his eye, Irvine could see someone dragging Almasy across the floor like a sack of curb-bound garbage.<p>

They left him in the corner.

His heart gave a slow painful wrench inside his chest like it was trying to pull itself apart, and all he could think of was what he was going to tell Quistis; Quistis with the soft smile on her face he'd never seen her give Almasy before, beautiful kind-hearted Quisty under that exterior of honed-steel soldier who just might possibly be letting herself fall in love with this man.

This man who was probably dead. This man who had once been his enemy and yet had somehow found something inside himself that could look at his friend the way Squall looked at Rinoa, that could salvage enough humanity from the wreckage the sorceress had left behind to care about something that was not himself.

He stared at the crumpled-trash heap of Almasy, the left side of his face matted with blood, and all he could think about was the way he still felt, most nights. Empty vaccuum of cathedral-echo pain inside of his chest, and a hole like fatal gut wound slowly dribbling everything that was inside of him, everything that made up Irvine Kinneas, out into the black-painted ceiling shadows that were his only companions on nights he couldn't sleep at all.

He thought about her feeling like that, and the smolder of fire that was a slowly widening maw of despair inside his gut flared out to smother his heart. It had become a conflageration by the time it reached his chest, and his sudden rage hazed the world red around him.

Dammit, Almasy.

Irvine let his stare go blurry with concentration, smearing together everything that was not that unmoving gray lump into a featureless blob. _Get up, you idiot. She cares about you. _

If Irvine was honest with himself, something he usually tried to be, he didn't want Almasy to die either. He might never like the guy-hell, he was pretty damn sure that would never happen-but going after Dincht like that on the battlefield, throwing himself in between Irvine's friend and the assholes all simultaneously trying to kill them both like he didn't give a shit what happened to him-that had taken balls. Irvine could respect that.

And there was still the little matter of what Quistis' face would look like if Almasy didn't ever move again.

He squinted up into the actinic strobe flare of the buzzing flourescents above them, shifting his hands where they had been knotted behind him. The floor underneath him was cold, the machine-jammed space around him a medically-sterile reek in his nostrils. Across from him was Squall, alive but curled up around a bloody gash in his side, a knife wound he'd taken when the shadows around them gave birth to three soldiers that took them by surprise. He blinked like he was confused up into that light Irvine had to turn his eyes away from before it blinded him, his face sun-bleached bone in the unflattering illumination.

Seifer's was leukemia gray.

Irvine wriggled his fingers, letting the motion ripple up into his hands, trying to flex them in their bindings. Asshole'd tied 'em good, but he thought there was a little give as he rotated his wrists with supple flicks that hissed the coil of his restraints across the back of his duster.

The room they had been dumped in flared out into another larger chamber behind them, and from that he could hear voices that leaked little slivers of conversation he probably wasn't supposed to hear back to him.

"-one of them should be privy to the information ve require. But I don't vant the rest of them killed-I am alvays in need of more test subjects."

He wasn't gonna' be some Hyne-damned guinea pig to that freak; Irvine gave a sharp tug on the loop of rope twisted into a snarl of figure eight around both wrists, and felt something pop. He clamped down on an expletive; it hadn't been his dominant hand at least, and the pain was already slowly ebbing away. He paused for a moment, waiting out the gradually fading inferno flicker that had been his bones grinding the wrong way against each other. Then he tugged again, experimentally at first, then harder when neither his wrists nor the rope protested; he felt another scant centimeter of space broaden the arc of open air between the rope and his hands, and a little glimmer of a smile pulled his lips.

"-no, the one in ze tank can_not _be removed yet. He iz not vell enough for vat you vish to subject him to. One of ze other ones vill have to be used and ve need-"

Across the room from him, Squall's head flopped over and blinked at him.

* * *

><p>Irvine's face became a smear of red-veined cloud before him. His features had melted and run together, and he kept trying to blink them back into focus, kept shaking his head and squinting his eyes and trying to bat away wisps of blood with little flicks of lash that didn't do much.<p>

He'd hit his head-or someone had done that for him, he couldn't remember now-which meant what he was seeing, what he was staring right at through the thin lines of slit he had made his eyes into-

That wasn't real. Almasy on his side not talking or moving or breathing as far as he could tell-that wasn't _right_.

Almasy was an unstoppable pain in the ass. Deal what you were certain, you were _positive_ had been a critical hit, and he only took it like a lightning rod redirecting jags of stormlight, and kept coming.

He shrugged it off, and opened your face down to the bone and so you had to-you were _burning _to do the same to him, to leave him open and bleeding and humiliated on a battlefield that flared spell-cast red and lightning flicker white and incoming storm rumble purple-

Squall shook his head again, his long bangs a slithering reptilian hiss against the floor he had his cheek pressed up against. Almasy-selfish, ambition-driven Seifer Almasy-loved Quistis Trepe. As much, as desperately, as single-mindedly undoubtedly as he had fallen for Rinoa, and once upon a time, that had been impossible. Once upon a time it could have never happened, and so maybe, perhaps-

It just might be possible this fiction that did not stare him back because its eyes remained closed, because the static unmoving rag doll that used to be Seifer Almasy did not say or think or do anything anymore-

It was just, possibly, perhaps, a truth. A reality.

He couldn't shape the world that blurred in front of him around this reality he had to make himself consider. It didn't make any _sense_; Almasy was as much a legend as all the rest of them, maybe not in the same way, maybe not even in the way he had planned, but just as illustrious as he had promised himself he would one day become a long, long time ago.

And yet-

Selphie had been a legend too, a celebrity on the right side of the fairy tale. And in a jag of instant that was all it took to turn that thundering moment into constant unchanging forever, she had left them.

Which meant that Seifer could too.

Squall blinked again. Quistis-

What would Quistis do? What would she say? What would she _feel_?

He tried to open his mouth, to work his tongue. It peeled off the roof of his mouth with a slow parting tear like bandaid, but he couldn't find his voice.

It came out an arthritic quiver of old man inquiry. "Al-" He cleared his throat, quietly, the effort stabbing pain through his temples and scraping like a knife across his eyeballs, flinching him back from that light again. "Almasy?"

Irvine, sitting across the room with both long legs stretched out before him, shook his head very slowly.

No-

The protest solidified in his head.

_No. _They were all making it out of here, all right? All right, _goddammit? _He glared a silent _get-up-_damn_-you _command across the expanse of swept-clean floor tile between them, putting all his authority into that slit-eyed glower like somehow, someway Almasy could feel it burning like guided laser through the bunched-up collar of his trench coat to the skin underneath. He _would _get up. And if it was what she wanted, if it was what would make her happy, he would walk out of here tall and proud and straight, and into Quistis' arms. Because Matron had spun them all tales of beautiful princesses and handsome knights and fearsome monsters that were always defeated, of sunsets that were always ridden off into and happy endings that were inevitable, and _someone_, _somehow _was getting that ending.

"Almasy!" he croaked again; his rival's name scraped his throat like sandpaper, and he hacked a cough.

He squeezed his eyes shut. "Almasy, get up! Get up!" he hissed. _Get up get up get up -_

It became a mantra inside his head that matched the slow abrasive wheeze of each in breath he had to draw carefully, because each expansion of his ribcage hurt him. His pulse where it banged in his neck stretched the skin painfully; every sensation from the knife thrust of light behind his lids to the awkward tangle of his legs coiled together in a jumble of ligature was pain, and it began to suck him back under a thundering crest of ocean wave showing night-dark along the edges of his consciousness.

* * *

><p>Pain is something that can be made into an abstract.<p>

The right training, a fuck-it-all mindset, a hint of metal against the lips-

These can override anything from a hanging flap of raw meat knuckle tear, to a slow-leak bleed-out that will become fatal in just a few short minutes. Adrenaline's a nifty little bitch; get enough of it pumping through your system, and that shit will stand you up like overloaded power conduit hardwired directly into your central nervous system.

Just like it is doing to him now.

He can barely see through the blood running down the side of his face, gumming up one eye. The whole world has become multi-colored liquid around him, undulating like that blood-colored shit enclosing his friend, and it too is streaked red around the edges now.

It doesn't matter.

He's the only one standing, even if he's not doing it very well.

He stumbles against the flat plane of wall nearest him, and lays his forehead down until it stops spinning.

And then he realizes it will never stop spinning, and he pushes himself out and away again, staggering.

He takes a step like newborn animal, shaky and weak and not at all goddamned certain how to work these things underneath him. Pubes is staring at him. The cowboy is staring at him-or at least, he thinks they are.

He can't see very well right now.

His fucking head hurts. It hammers away at him like shreds of left-over hangover, clinging stubbornly on through the next morning. He can barely even fucking _think _with this staccato roll of drumbeat inside his head, edging its way toward a goddamned three-piece orchestra-

There is only one thought that can make its way through the pounding in his head.

He is going to kill the cocksuckers who did this to him, and stopped him from saving his friend.

* * *

><p>Irvine watched Almasy scrape himself off the floor in amazement, and a tiny little part of him that was just enough to comprehend what he heard simultaneously caught another piece of backroom conversation:<p>

"-not dead. Pulled the shot, because Grayson here flipped his shit when he realized he'd just drawn down on Seifer Almasy. Should be out for a while at least-"

Almasy was heading for the discarded pile of weaponry in the corner now, shuffling along with one hand on the wall.

Holy _shit_-

The Hyne-damned asshole was going to _fight _them.

"Hey!" he hissed through his teeth, making a subtle little squeak of a toe scrape across the floor with one boot. "Little help here, Almasy?"

Unfocused green eyes swung around to blink dazedly at him, and then with barely a wrist flicker of warning, Exeter came winging through the air at him, hitting the floor and skidding to within an inch of his boots, where it stopped, spinning out the last of its momentum on the checkerboard tiles between him and Squall.

Seifer went into a kneel that was more a fall behind him and began to hack clumsily away at the rope binding his wrists, his hands shaking like an old man's-not at all reassuring, when he had several feet of blade inadequately sized for such a delicate task in both of those hands. Irvine leaned instinctively away from the cold steel prickle of Hyperion he could feel bump his spine every so often.

The room behind them had gone stagnant, funeral silent. "Hurry up, man."

His hands came free with a snap that made him wince, for just a moment, and then he was on his feet, rifle in one hand, pounded-flat hat in the other.

He popped the brim back out into its proper shape, and set it back down on his head.

It was the only thing he had time to do.

Someone hit him from behind like a freight train, and Exeter flew from his hand, clattering down half an inch from Squall's nose. Irvine dropped low, hingeing at the hips and popping the man behind him up onto his back, the nimble twist he torqued his upper body into flipping the man over one shoulder and slamming him down with a crack like hairline fracture. He spun and caught the next like a reunited lover hurtling himself into Irvine's open loving arms, and his head butt spread the man's nose like a pancake.

He punched him in the throat, fisted a hand in the collar of his uniform, and swung him through an arc like weighted pendulum veer that splattered his face against the wall.

His pivot was a graceful dancer's turn of a rotation that whirled him all the way back around toward his weapon, and he swept it back up in his palm without a single interruption in the smooth flow of his spin, bringing the gun around to bear on the guy using Almasy's face for a punching bag.

It was too close a shot to take for anyone else; flickers of gold and dull-gleam chestnut flicked through dodges and fake-outs and mis-directions so quick they became almost one man, one single skull in the crosshairs of his sniper's scope.

One single entity that would all just become crimson confetti spray between the junction of those intersecting lines, no leeway of margin to allow for the tiniest miscalculation of an error.

If he got it wrong, Irvine blew Almasy's face all over the wall.

He pulled the trigger.

Suppressor-muffled muzzle gases coughed asthmatically.

Almasy's opponent went down wearing only half a face.

The tall blonde slumped over against the wall, breathing heavily, holding his side like it hurt him, and Irvine noticed him pull his hand back slick with the wet-gleam scarlet of fresh blood.

Beyond him, a flash of lurid eye-searing color and the flop of a ridiculous collar pulled Irvine's gaze past Seifer.

"That-fuck-Odine." Seifer panted. "I'm going after him." He picked up Hyperion, holding it awkwardly like the blade was suddenly too heavy for him, and then he began to run, crookedly limping into shadows that swallowed him whole.

"Almasy, wait!" Irvine staggered a graceless half-step of a sprint that he turned into a halt, slinging Exeter across his shoulder with a frown.

"Irvine." Squall hissed from the floor, and he swung around to find his friend trying to prop himself upright on an elbow that kept sliding out from underneath him, his face contorted beneath the streamers of blood trickling down through his scalp and across his forehead.

He used Lionheart to free his friend and helped him back to his feet, handing him his gunblade once he had steadied himself enough against the wall to accept it. "Help Zell. Then get Quistis and get out of here; do it quick. We don't know where the rest of them are." Squall pushed himself off the wall. "I'm going after Almasy."

"Hey." Irvine grabbed him by the sleeve. "No offense, Commander, but you an' Almasy are both a little worse for the wear. You run into any trouble and-"

"Get Zell." Squall repeated, his face going robotically, indifferently blank. "Quistis-" He shook his head, to clear it or because he didn't want to finish his sentence, Irvine wasn't sure. "I'm not letting him get himself killed."

He hefted Lionheart in one pale hand, the veins showing stark as scars through the skin stretched taut over the handle he white-knuckled like it was the only thing still holding him together, and then he was gone.

* * *

><p>Quistis proceeded in a cautious heel-toe stealth creep through the silent sentinels of the diode-ornamented capsules around her, gun out in front of her.<p>

Her heart jack-hammered in her ears.

Their eyes watched her as she slipped noiselessly between the ripple-cut walls of their prisons, anemone limbs of blue and red flaring out from bare-shaved skulls like strands of costume wig.

Their stares chewed into her chest like a spike of ice spell, and she went cold all the way down to the tips of her boots.

She should have known better than to expect a plan that hinged on Seifer Almasy's cooperation and discretion to go off without a hitch; if 'plan' was even the right word for it at all.

She had been listening to the distant echoic sounds of rioting still going on outside the lab within the heart of the city itself when the first gunshot went off like a peal of thunder. For a long time after that Quistis sat with her heart in her throat, concentrating on the shallow in and out breaths of her charges, because these at least were not all the different scenarios she kept piecing together inside her head.

Irvine, getting off a shot that became his last, going down with a six inches of moonlit gleaming stiletto through his throat-

Squall, lunging forward to avenge his friend and taking a faceful of Firaga that burned his cheeks from the black-veined plate armor of his smoking skull-

And Seifer, Seifer-

She blinked all of these thoughts, these possibilities away.

And she waited for as long as she could stand it. Because to rush blindly in, to leave her post and throw herself recklessly, irresponsibly into whatever went on beyond those doors her gaze kept pulling itself back to-it might get them killed.

It might give her one last glimpse of Seifer, meeting her eyes one final time in the critical semi second of moment that it was all it took for the bare instant of his distraction to get him killed.

That thought kept her where she was-back pressed to the wall, knees tucked to her chin, gun balanced on the points of those knees, eyes steady and staring and beginning to show fear at last in the faint lines of squint that creased them at the corners. But finally, inevitably, her fingers going dread-numb cold and her limbs bloodlessly stiff-

Quistis couldn't take it anymore.

Her first sight of these silent staring faces around her wadded her heart up in her throat.

_Children_, all of them. Wire-strapped and diode-taped and completely nude, drifting bonelessly in the gentle pulse of current generated by the quiet whirs of fan belt she could hear coming at her from all sides. She spent most of her stealthy trip through them to the other side of the lab avoiding their gazes, trying to pin her concentration firmly on the task at hand, prodding it gently back on course every time it went skipping off toward those watching eyes and attenuate juts of malnourished ribcage and hip bone and slender waving branches of tree twig limbs.

Shaved-thin eyebrows twitched into furrows of frown line.

Up against those ripple-cut walls of glass prison cell, splays of open palm showed wrinkled white against the sides.

Quistis paused in front of one that stood out from the rest; this capsule held blood-lit gloom that just barely hinted at something suspended within its center, and she took a cautious step past it, trying not to think about what was inside. If it held the same sort of sight as all the rest, she really didn't want to know.

From somewhere near the back of the room, she heard a pair of doors slam echoing off the walls to either side; Quistis ducked down beside the bullet-tapered glass of the container she had just skirted, holding her gun in a low at-guard position before her. A single pair of footsteps came pounding out across the carpet, and a flash of light peeking through those doors showed her wildly swinging ponytail.

She stood up carefully. "Irvine?"

He ponytail slapped down hard across one shoulder as he came to a baffled skidding halt. "Quisty? That you?"

She stepped out of the shadows she had been using as cover. "Where are Squall and Seifer?"

"Chasin' after that freak Odine. We gotta' get Dincht here out, fast; don't know how many soldiers are lurkin' around here. There's at least five of 'em around here. Well, three that I know of; Almasy and I took out a couple of them. Took us by surprise a couple of minutes ago."

"Zell? Where is he?"

Irvine nodded past her. "Behind you."

She was halfway through her turn when the spikes of his hair suddenly materialized through that gore-colored haze, and she stepped back with a startled little hiss that nearly spat the gun out of her hand and down onto the floor. Her heart in her throat became a snarl of bile, and in her gut nausea tied itself into a mass like terminal cancer. She could feel it creeping slowly toward her chest as those big blue eyes stared her back, pale lines of throat slit working like fish gills.

Oh Hyne; her stomach tried to join her heart, and she had to push it back down with all the cold hard calculation in her soldier's body.

Irvine swung Exeter with a follow-through like killing blow.

The glass starred, just faintly.

"This shit's thick." he grunted, swinging again.

"Is he…is-" She couldn't stop staring at those flaps of peeled-open neck flesh, little stripes of red-veined tendon that quivered like the fingers she had to fist closed. "Is he…even alive?"

Irvine slid his hat up out of his eyes, and his mouth become a grim hard slash in his pale face. "Better be."

Quistis let her eyes drift to the silver faceplate of the panel to the left of the glass, its buttons limned in a faint backlit glow. Irvine brought the butt of his rifle down with a hollowly echoing crack that spread another little spider web of fracture, superficial surface damage that didn't penetrate past the first layer. "_Shit_." he snapped, stepping back and rolling his shoulders, breathing heavily. "This ain't working."

"We need some sort of code to open it."

"Or somethin' heavier to throw through it." A sudden flash of thought crossed his face, and now he set Exeter down and laced his hands together, cracking his knuckles in a long chain of reports like machine gun rattle. "Hang on. Got an idea. Stand back, Quisty."

He pressed his hands to the glass, plams flared wide.

And then he shut his eyes, a pleat of concentration bunching up his brow beneath his hat.

His fingers began to glow blue-white, little vines of illumination like lightning that crawled between his knuckles to form a vast shimmering network of lines that pulsed and shivered like exposed artery. They closed slowly around the entire capsule, sealing themselves shut around the top in a marriage of bleached-bone tendrils like stubs of finger joint lacing together.

She could see a bead of sweat roll down his nose, and drip off the tip.

His shoulders bunched and his lips went pinched-white with strain, and slowly, slowly, that network began to blaze like a gradually heating forge.

His fingers began to shake.

The flame-lit radiance of those links of interlocking mesh reached its peak, and exploded.

A gush of bloodstained water hit Quistis like an ocean wave and knocked her down, the gun flying from her hand.

* * *

><p>Irvine caught Zell in his arms as he sagged forward, straining limbs of wire pulling taut like threads of puppet string, propping him half upright in the remains of his cell. His face echoed out a wet slap of a landing against Irvine's chest like a flop of butcher's meat on the cutting board, and Irvine went to his knees with his friend cradled there like a child.<p>

"Hey." he said gently, and the word had to crawl over the lump in his throat and past the tears in his eyes, making it out in a half croak like old man greeting. He fingered strands of damp gleaming hair from the twists of cheek tattoo they pasted themselves across, and slid the regulator in Zell's mouth gently out from between his lips. "Dincht, man, you with me?"

Those blue eyes were open but did not see anymore.

Which wasn't right, wasn't _possible_, because Selphie had already been taken from him, and surely, _surely _the universe wasn't this Hyne-damned cruel. Surely the streaks of blinding dampness squeezing themselves between his eyelashes were just smudges of the liquid still adhering to his friend's cold corpse skin. Surely-

Surely Quistis' hand hadn't just descended on his shoulder like he needed comforting, like without something to hold him together he would fly into pieces like these splinters of glass glittering under his knees. Sharp prickles of broken dying star, brittle and frail and shattered as his heart.

Irvine shook his head. He heard his ponytail whisper like a drawn-out sigh across his coat, and Quistis' hand clamped down more tightly. "No. Come on, Dincht. He's not dead, Quisty."

"Irvine." she said softly. "We need to leave."

"Come on, you jackass!" he snapped, giving him a shake that smacked Zell's face with another dull damp slap up against his chest. "Come _on_!"

"Irvine-"

A long rasp of an inhalation arched his body like heart attack victim under defibrillator jolt, and he hacked a wet cough that spattered clots of tacky red across the front of Irvine's shirt. He slumped forward choking, the wires taped to his arms and back and neck straining again; the slits of fish gill gap Quistis had noticed earlier were superficial nicks, Irvine could see now, numbers carved meticulously into the thin flesh there.

12; that was what his neck read. What the Hyne-damned _hell_?

He tightened his arms around Zell as his friend convulsed. "Shit, you little asshole; scared me."

"Al-" He hacked up another bubble of crimson, sliding his lids down and then open once more, trying to blink the rest of those clinging shreds of red like cobweb from his eyes. Quistis reached across Irvine to tenderly wipe his face, smearing wet-gleam bloodshine from his cheeks. "Almasy. What-happ-" Another coughing fit folded him down over Irvine's lap, retching.

"Seifer? What happened to Seifer?" Quistis demanded.

Irvine frowned. "Come on, man; let's get this shit out of you." He stood up carefully, taking Zell with him, leaving his friend propped up against him as he felt delicately along the threads of wire back toward where they hooked into the machine. He wound them around his hand like a coil of rope and then gave a sharp yank, ripping them all free with a soft pop like blown fuse. Zell stumbled forward, going to his knees in shards of glass that crunched loudly beneath the awkward accordian fold of his legs.

Irvine crouched next to him and set about sliding each wire from the shaking martial artist, drawing free points of needle that hooked into the end of each cord and from there into his friend's skin, red-painted slivers of gunmetal that shone like the glass beneath his boots.

"What happened to Seifer?" she repeated.

He frowned again, concentrating. "Almasy got his dumb ass shot. He's alive, Quisty." He stopped what he was doing, leaving one hand pressed up against Zell's flinching back, looking gravely up at her. "Might be badly hurt, though. Couldn't tell for sure, but he was in bad shape when he took off."

She had gone very pale in the low light of the dim-lit capsules around them, and he watched her hands ball themselves into fists at her sides. He softened his voice and then his face, his chest going tight and his toes going amputated limb dead inside his boots where they curled up underneath him. "I got this. I'll get Dincht outta' here. You go after him. Make sure they both come back."

"Be careful." Quistis told him, and then she was gone.

"You too, Quisty." he said softly.

* * *

><p>Seifer hit another wall and stopped dead.<p>

He could barely fucking see anymore through the shit in his eyes and the fog in his head, and for a moment he had to just stay like that, slumped over breathing in wheezes that hurt his lungs and sprayed copper all over the back of his throat.

Shit. He hoped he'd just bitten his tongue; he might have-it wasn't like a smooth straight line of a sprint was really within his fucking abilities right now. He'd spent the last several minutes caroming off crates and blinking computer terminals and whatever other shit got in his way, careening into walls and off corners of desk edge that bit through his shirt and into his stomach underneath, slicing up the skin there into ragged claw marks.

That fucker Odine was getting away.

Seifer could see that ridiculous spray of flamboyant collar flop with each awkward shambling step of the scientist's fruity little run as he reached the next bend, and he knew he would not be able to catch him.

He was fucking done for; his goddamned legs and lungs and heart had all stopped working, and he couldn't breathe or think or even fucking walk. All he could do, all he could manage, was to lean there scraping thin whistling threads of oxygen down the pinhole of his throat and into the fucked-up snarl of his lungs, his eyes blurring and his stomach coiling.

So instead of stumbling another step forward, instead of letting those shaking liquid knees pool underneath him in a twist of useless meat, he hefted his arm through an arc of a swing that brought Hyperion up over his shoulder in a forehand like a tennis pro delivering a smash of backhand.

And he threw.

He slid down the wall panting, leaving a streak of lurid blood behind.

His weapon glanced off the curve of wall corner that ridiculous fucking collar had just disappeared around and bounced off, taking a chunk of plaster with it.

"Shit-"

Someone jumped him from behind.

His chin bounced off the floor and the entire world blanked out around him, featureless panoramic that was all suddenly just Time Compression gray, and now he felt a thin sliver of heat through his back going past the kidney, and he gritted his teeth as he waited for it to hang up on his spine.

And then just like that, it was gone.

Thunder peal that echoed and rolled and boomeranged all over his throbbing fucking skull made his stomach heave, and what slid out between his lips was either blood or bile; he couldn't tell.

Something hit the wall to his left with a dull meat-slap thud, and slid down.

Someone's hands held him by the shoulders; Seifer rolled to his side with half a cross-block extended like a shield over his face, and the hands suddenly pulled back.

He was staring up into Quistis' cold blue eyes.

She ripped his coat open with a brutal yank of her fingers, jarring him against the floor.

Well, fuck-how was this for a goddamned romantic reunion; he felt cheated. He'd seen the movies; she was supposed to throw herself sobbing into his arms and then they'd fuck right here with that Galbadian cadet's brains decorating the wall, impossibly amazing sex where they both came twice even though he felt like someone was trying to use his head as a battering ram against reinforced-steel bank vault.

He wiped blood or vomit or some asshole's guts from his lips; who the fuck knew.

"You're an idiot."

He glared up at her. Or at least, he was pretty sure he did; he was not entirely sure which of the three vaguely Quistis-shaped smears above him was actually her head.

"Where's Squall?"

"How the fuck should I know?" The effort of speaking made his head hurt worse. He closed his eyes, and a sharp stinging throb of backhand snapped them back open. "Ow! The fuck was that for, Trepe?"

"Do not go to sleep, Seifer." She pulled him up into a slump that was half an upright sit by the lapels of his trench coat, propping him up against her. "Where is Squall?" she asked again.

"Don't know. Hyne, my fuckin' head hurts."

"He followed you."

"Well, I haven't seen him." He squinted up into the light, trying not to vomit down the front of her shirt. "Maybe he turned back."

"Or was re-captured." Quistis replied grimly.

"Then maybe you should go rescue your princess." He sneered up at her.

She sat frowning down at him, pulling her hand through the hair at the side of his temple, her hand coming away coated in oil slick glow that shone wet-gleaming red like his mother's nails. "You're bleeding a lot."

"Yeah; I guess that happens when some fucker shoots you in the head or something."

"You're lucky they only grazed you." She slipped her hands under his armpits, and with a heave that strained her arms and contorted her face in concentration, managed to get him up onto his knees, and from there to his feet. He sagged against her, one arm around her shoulders, his knees slack and useless and trying to fold right back up underneath him so that she had to hold up most of his weight with her own diminutive frame. He cleared his throat and spit up another wad of foam-flecked red as Quistis' fingers tentatively probed his new knife wound.

"This doesn't look life-threatening, but it's going to need stitches."

Fuck; at this point, he was pretty sure there wasn't much of his body left that didn't require being pieced back together. Trepe might as well just leave him here; time for him to go out like the fucking trash he was. He certainly felt like something that had crawled from the goddamned garbage dumpster.

The first halting step forward she took with Seifer draped half across her crumpled his legs underneath him like a slap of ankle sweep taking them out, and his knees hit the floor hard enough to send shockwave ripples up through the rest of his body. "Shit. Just go, Quistis. I'll fucking crawl out or something." Everything hurt too fucking much for him to care anymore, his headache a thumping reverberation of hammer blow inside his brain.

The slap that snapped his head around slammed another spike of migraine between his eyes like a blow of knife slash pounded home, ripping into his brain. Her doubled-fisted grab wrapped itself in the folds of trench coat lapel she clamped all ten fingers around in a grip like steel girder, and suddenly he was hanging, he was swaying from her pretty little hands nose to nose with her, those blue eyes arctic, Trabian cold. "Get _up_, Almasy." Quistis barked.

"I can't." he snapped.

The whole fucking world was spinning around him, didn't she get that? Particolored flashes of iridescence like half-finished rainbow swirling around and around and around him until he couldn't distinguish walls from ceiling from floor, and he was just so fucking _tired_-

She slapped him again as his head lolled, even harder this time. "You can, and you will. Are you a coward?" Quistis demanded coldly.

_-are you afraid of them little coward boy is that why you keep failing me is that why you won't kill them little coward boy-_

"I'm not a fucking _coward_." he snarled.

"Then I need you to get up. You have to help me, Seifer; I can't carry you the rest of the way. Zell is alive and safe; Irvine and I got him out. We've accomplished what we came to do. You saved him."

"I didn't do shit." he mumbled, his stomach heaving again. "I didn't do fucking _shit_, Trepe." Seifer spat. "Go after Pubes; he's your real hero, isn't he?"

"_Stop _it, Seifer." Her hands tightened on his collar, bunching it up around his throat, and her face and eyes and those pretty red lips-_they were so fucking soft so fucking _fucking _gentle and they were not his mother's tearing his mouth with little nips of teeth like pricks of needle stab_-they were all smearing together, and he tried to stop it, tried to blink everything back together into one cohesive picture-

"Seifer." she said his name softly, and he could hear desperation in her voice even if he couldn't see it in her eyes. "I am choosing you. Stop bringing Squall into this-I am still here because I'm choosing _you _instead of him, Seifer. I am not going after him, because getting you out is more important to me." She shook him a little, gently. "Do you understand?"

No. He didn't fucking understand anything anymore. Trepe wasn't choosing him-she had _never _fucking chosen him because her precious shining star Pubes one desk over was always more important to her, and every sporadic word out of his mouth was some kind of fucking miracle, life-changing revelation that she ate up the same way he had lapped his mother's goddamned praise like the good little fucking dog he was.

And Seifer? He was just a fucking gnat circling her head, swatted out of the way when she even bothered to notice him.

"Seifer. _Please_."

The room was spinning again and his head was pounding, pounding, pounding, and fucking _Hyne _he couldn't think, couldn't unknot the jumble of her words enough to make any sense of them-

"You're not going after Leonhart?" he slurred.

She reached up to brush a piece of hair from his eyes. "No. Not until you're out."

"Why?"

She wiped blood gently from his mouth, and he wished he could figure out what her fucking eyes were telling him, except he could barely see them, and now here were those goddamned shadows, oozing off the walls in a creep of molasses slither that reached the floor and began to crawl up his legs, whispering to him.

_-hello boy hello it's us remember us mommy says hi mommy says hi seifer time to go see her-_

No-

"I don't wanna'-" _Get _away _from me-_

"I'm not giving you a choice, Seifer." Quistis replied, misunderstanding him. "Get up. You can do it."

"No-"

They had reached his knees-they'd reached his motherfucking _knees _already and she couldn't even see them, she wasn't even trying to fucking _help _him-

_-seifer seifer seifer remember what it felt like to let your mother fuck you remember what it felt like to want to make her scream remember boy remember how you wanted to break her neck when she wouldn't stop-_

The shadows reached his heart, and he crashed sideways into her arms.

The shattered-melon _thock _of his head hitting the floor again was the last thing he heard.


	21. Chapter 19

**A/N: Ok, so here's the deal: this story is now complete, with the exception of the final read-throughs and minor tweaks I perform right before posting, just to make sure I haven't made some humiliating mistake that makes me look like a dumbass. There are four chapters to go after this one plus a short epilogue, and since I no longer have to worry about trying to stay ahead of myself in order to be able to update on a regular basis, I'm going to be posting these final chapters whenever I get a chance, as opposed to sticking to my (fairly) regular habit of posting once a week. Chapter Twenty will probably go up this weekend, though I can't absolutely guarantee that. Also, this chapter is long as shit-holy crap, I really did not realize how long this chapter was until I uploaded it. I apologize-but at least it's almost over, right?**

**Dee-your review pretty much made my day. This is exactly what I hope to accomplish with my writing-to make people feel for the characters. I am extremely pleased you think I am accomplishing this.**

**Mischka-I'm glad to see you popping in here and there. If I remember correctly, you were the one who was a bit shy about reviewing a while back, yes? I appreciate that you take the time to leave feedback; my work tends to fly under the radar a lot it seems like, and even a short comment here and there is encouraging to me.**

**Chapter Nineteen**

Dr. Odine's Laboratory

Esthar

The sky became a blaze of midday sunglow behind his shoulders.

Through windows lit up like a long-ago parade procession, flame-core orange stabbed him through the eyes, and left him reeling blindly helpless.

When he blinked glare from his eyes that smeared sunspots of sporadic winking black from his vision, he saw Irvine sitting with Zell cradled in his lap, wrapped up in the cowboy's trench coat and shivering, the guards Quistis had subdued earlier with her whip still obliviously out cold in one corner.

No Almasy, and no Quistis. The sliver of horizon visible past Irvine's broad shoulders burned conflagration red, and Squall blinked again. "What happened to Seifer and Quistis?"

Irvine squinted up at him, and then looked back down with a frown as a shift of one of his knees stirred a moan of pain from Zell. "Dunno. She went after both of you a little while ago. I can't wait much longer-I gotta' get him out of here. He ain't gonna' die, but he needs help."

Squall tipped Lionheart up to slant across one shoulder. "Quistis came after us?"

"Yeah. She helped me get Dincht out of the tank and then she took off. What happened?"

"I don't know; I lost Seifer. I circled back around here thinking maybe he'd doubled back or something because he couldn't make it; he was losing a lot of blood when he took off." He touched his own scalp wound, wincing. "You haven't seen him?"

"I haven't seen that idiot since he ran off after Odine." Irvine nodded down at Zell. "We have to get him out of here. Quisty'll get Almasy out safely. The riots are picking up outside; we gotta' move soon if we don't want to get caught up in the middle of it. They're starting to break windows and set fires."

"She might need help. Seifer was in bad shape; she can't carry him out on her own."

Irvine slid himself out from underneath Zell, grabbing the other young man around the waist as he stood and hoisting him up and over one shoulder in a fireman's carry, Exeter across the other. "Shit; yeah. All right. I think I can get him back to the Palace by myself; hospital's too risky right now. Laguna's physician can take a look at him."

"Can you make it?" Squall asked dubiously, eyeing Zell on one shoulder and that long bulky rifle on the other, Irvine's forehead still weeping red from a superficial cut there.

The tall sharpshooter shrugged, carefully. "Not like I got another choice. You double back, see if you can find 'em. Be careful." He shifted Zell on his shoulder where the other man had begun to slide down slightly, and clamped one arm down across the backs of his legs.

Squall nodded, a sharp little jerk of the head that flipped hair from his eyes, and then his friend was gone, through the front entrance and out onto a street smeared in the lurid bloodglow of spreading flames. He could hear the pop and sizzle of that hellish inferno even from here, and it prompted him to spin all the way back around on one heel so that he pointed himself back toward the door through which he had just come, his pulse a roar of incoming surf in his ears.

The main lab became a smudge of dark twisting shadow and intermittent emergency light flicker at the corners of his eyes, strobe light irregularity that hurt his head; Squall hit the far doors at a run, the impact spinning him around into a whirl he had to turn into a streak of uppercut when someone crashed into him. They dropped with a little fluid hiccup of an in breath, choking on two feet of Lionheart.

He unsheathed his weapon, the blade scraping squealing out across fountaining trachea stump, and kicked the body out of his way.

He didn't have time to screw around; he could hear approaching flames like a hiss of cauterization, joining that pounding blood breaker in both ears until he could hear nothing else. The hallway twisted and torqued and rippled in on itself all around him and still he kept going, kept sprinting, ignoring the socket-popped snap and creak of one ankle that was a fireball of sprain where his boot strained too-tight around it, Lionheart describing long arcs of piston-pump along the side of his body.

He slammed through another set of doors, stumbled, and began to run again.

Quistis was what mattered now. Not this swell of nausea in his throat or hot spot of toe blister that ripped itself bleeding open between the friction of boot and sock, and not the wheeze of inhalation that could barely force itself down his squeezed-tight throat.

Little blue-eyed girl smiling at him on the beach where he had made his home, because he had no other choice, because his father did not want him and his mother was dead. Big sister Quisty, telling him what to do because she was convinced the other children could not possibly know what was best for them.

And that stupid jerk Almasy-

Zell Dincht was a loud, annoying idiot, but he was still one of Squall's closest friends, and Seifer, selfish, monstrous Seifer had risked everything trying to save him. The least Squall could do was return the favor.

It was still sometimes odd, discovering things that were important to him that had nothing to do with Rinoa's pretty mouth and soft eyes and gentle slide of meticulously-painted fingertip; she had consumed him for so long that everything else had just begun to blur together, watercolor vague, until he just assumed that nothing else really mattered to him.

And then he had discovered another layer to himself, something underneath his love for her that was no less vital, and he had found it in that infirmary, staring down at a machine that breathed for his friend because she could not do it alone anymore. He had felt it begin to burn like a probe of sunlight through a layer of storm cloud, blistering his whole damn chest, and he had tried to shut it off, to make it go away, because his love for Rinoa Heartilly was enough. It was _enough_, all right? He got it; you couldn't go your whole life not giving a damn about anything or anyone.

He still didn't want to care that the machine breathing for Selphie Tilmitt had not been enough, and he did not want to feel his heart go numb and his throat go tight when the high-pitched klaxon shriek that was the herald of her last breath woke him up with a squeal through his ears that hurt his whole head.

And now-

Now, he was feeling it all over again, this pain that throbbed like his heart inside his chest, going too-fast, except this time-

This time he was going to _do _something about it. This time, he was going to stop it, to make sure they all, together, made it through another day, lived another week, a month, a year-however long he could sustain this fragile tenuous existence that was a soldier's life.

So Almasy and Quistis were both getting out. Despite this hot spot of torn-open toe blister and scrape of ankle strain that was beginning to feather toward hairline fracture, and this sledgehammer blow of headache inside his brain, scrambling the whole world before him. Because if he, if Irvine, could not have the happy ending Matron had filled their naive young heads with, if Selphie was dead and Rinoa could not be safe with him-

Then Quistis would get it instead. If it was what she wanted, if Almasy was the one who could give it to her-

He'd go right through anything that stood in the way.

* * *

><p><em>-I am choosing you seifer-<em>

The floor was a long slick slide underneath him, streaked in his blood.

-_I am still here because I'm choosing you instead of him seifer do you understand I am choosing you seifer I am choosing you seifer-_

New penny copper on his goddamned tongue and lips and throat, spreading heat shimmer red across his eyes-

-_I am not going after him because getting you out is more important to me do you understand do you understand do you understand do you understand do you understand do you understand-_

The light stabbed his eyes like the gunblade that knocked and screeched across the floor somewhere ahead of him, and he flipped his lids down over them before that shit could impale them all the way through.

_-I am not going after him I am not going after him I am not going after him I am not going after him do you understand do you understand getting you out is more important to me seifer I am choosing you seifer I am choosing you-_

The floor underneath him stopped moving. Someone was breathing in harsh animal pants that reminded him of his mother in the dark, thrusting above him with little slaps of sex-drenched flesh smack-

_-hello seifer said the shadows-_

"Seifer." There was a hand on his cheek and it wasn't his mother's but still he didn't want to open his eyes, because this was what she did, this subtle alteration of voice that she made sound like someone else's, someone who cared about him, and when he gave in, when he started to believe, when he wrenched his eyes open with a smile-

It would be her after all, his face in one hand and his dick in the other, and the sharp twisting yank she gave it made him want to die and made him want to flip her off the bed and take her on the floor hard enough to hurt them both-

"Seifer. Please. You have to help me."

He wasn't fucking falling for this, not again, not _again_, goddamned cunt whore-

"_Seifer_!" There was a hand on both his cheeks now, warm and soft and ending in ragged-bitten stubs of untended nail that were not his mother's jabs of manicured needle point, tearing up his back-

"Seifer, can you hear me?"

Yeah, bitch, he heard. Nice try; nice fucking try, _whore_-

Someone pried his eyes open for him, and he flinched back from the light that coiled to stab him like his mother's fingertips, holding him by the ass as he fucked her like a dog riding a bitch in heat-

He had to squint very hard to bring eyes that were not his mother's into focus above him, and the smile that wreathed the face of this woman who was not his mother reached all the way down inside of him, and now suddenly he could remember, now suddenly he could blink this fog from his eyes and this haze from his brain, and try to smile back, through blood that cracked on his face into flakes like drying paint. "Trepe?"

"Yes." He felt a thumb go over his bottom lip, and he wanted her to keep it there-he wanted to just fucking stay like this, forever, even with this throb of hammer in his skull that was smashing everything. "I need you to get up, Seifer. You're too heavy for me to carry. You have to stand up."

"My fuckin' head hurts." he slurred.

"I know." She brushed one of her hands down his cheek again, and he tried to lean into it, but even this tiniest fraction of a movement hurt, and he had to hold very still until everything stabilized around him once more. "But I just need you to stand up for me. We don't have much farther to go. You can make it."

"Yeah?"

"Yes." She wrapped her hands in the folds of his lapels again, and pulled him up face to face with her.

"I don't think I'm gonna' make it." He was pretty fucking sure, actually; if sitting up like this made him need to vomit, he was pretty goddamned positive standing up would put him right back down on his knees, spewing.

"You will, Seifer." He felt an arm go under his, sliding across his back, and then she was heaving at him like she was trying to leverage a fucking boulder over the side of a cliff.

"Instructor, did I ever tell you I love you?" Seifer wondered if he sounded as drunk-off-his-ass garbled to her as he did to himself.

"Yes, you already mentioned that."

"Ok. Just wanted to make sure, in case I die."

"You _won't _die. You have a head wound that will be easily treatable as soon as we can make it back to the Presidential Palace."

"Gotta' get there, first." he slurred again.

"Put your feet down." she ordered him, and he tried, he really fucking did, but the goddamned things just kept sliding right out from underneath him, until he was right back where he'd started, on his hands and knees dry heaving. Quistis kneeled in front of him and pulled him back up by the lapels, and now her voice was full of panic, making him feel like a dick. "Seifer, _look _at me."

He blinked dazedly.

"How many fingers do you see?"

"I don't know." he confessed, trying to squint and blinking instead. "I'm fucked, aren't I?"

"No, but we need to get you out of here quickly. You've taken several serious blows to the head recently; you may have cerebral hemorrhaging. We need to get you out of here quickly, do you understand?"

"What about the shadows?" he mumbled, his head sagging forward against her neck, hitting with a wet slap like blood splash. "They're not gonna' let you, Instructor, you know that right. You know that, right? Matron's gonna' fuck me. You know she did that? She did it all the time; told her not to, but she never listened." He let out a long low sigh against the curve of her throat, shutting his eyes again. "Can't go anywhere. Bitch's got me; she won't let me go. I wanted to go back to Garden, but she wouldn't let me-didn't want to kill any of you, Instructor, but she wanted me to. Matron wanted me to, so I did it anyway. Sorry. You believe me, right, Instructor? That I didn't want to do it?"

"Yes." she replied thickly.

"Yeah?" Her neck was so fucking soft and down here he didn't notice the spinning, couldn't feel the pulse of his migraine trying to beat down the walls of his fucking skull, and maybe, if he was very good and very quiet and so fucking still she couldn't see him anymore-_please goddammit, please matron, just go away, just go the _fuck _away_-maybe she'd let him stay here like this.

Maybe she'd just let him die in her fucking arms, or whatever it was that was left for him to do.

"Hey; you love me, Instructor? Matron used to tell me she did, but I'm not sure…she did a lot of fucking shit that made me think…maybe she didn't. Maybe she hated me. Everyone does."

"Not everyone." Quistis whispered.

He smiled and felt himself slip under again.

* * *

><p>This is her real revelation.<p>

The others before this-mere ripples of beginning understanding.

But now-now she truly gets it.

Her heart and her gut and her throat-they're all being squeezed, a fractional increase of pressure centimeter by centimeter, until the world hazes black around her in the first red-veined stage of asphyxiation.

He is going to die.

He has gone very still and quiet and uncharacteristically calm against her, and she can do _nothing_, she can only sit here hoping he understands that at least he is not alone, at least someone cares-

But it is not enough for her.

Something dark and bleak and unbearably selfish is eating her chest, consuming her heart, acid-burning a hole inside her that will become a vacant echoing void when he is gone, and all she can ask herself, the only thing she wants to know-

Is why didn't she understand this sooner? When did she become so monumentally, unforgivably _stupid_, to not realize that somewhere along the way, this man who was once a boy on a beach where their mother was still alive, where Selphie was still alive-this boy who grew into a man who forgot how to smile-

He's made himself irreplaceable.

And all she can do to help him, is cradle his face very gently against her neck where he has left it, staring down at pale branch lines of blue that form an interconnecting highway beneath white-marble arm skin. All she can do is keep squinting like this can somehow bring that teeth buzz of electric hum to her veins once more, like a scrutiny that lasts long enough, hard enough, will somehow give her the ability to channel the magic that can save him-

But she can't. Quistis Trepe, Rank A SeeD Trepe, Instructor number 14-

Is useless.

This might not be love fingering open that acid-hole that is a throb of open wound inside her heart, but it is close, and if she had just acknowledged it, if she had just let it go, let it _thrive_-

It doesn't matter. Because whatever this is that she feels for him, whatever it might have become-she is feeling it too late.

She can just barely see, through streaks of tears that turn the world around her into fractal lines of rain-blurred painting, Squall Leonhart's face, coming toward her.

Not blandly unemotional. Not robotically stiff, the way she is used to seeing him.

His face is contorted up like her chest, twisted up in knots that make it hard to breathe.

Is this pain, she wonders with faint afterthought astonishment, for her? Because he thought he wouldn't find her in time? Because he _cared _that he might not find her in time?

She hears herself ask him, in a voice she does not even recognize, to help her. And then she offers him Seifer Almasy like a prayer, holding him up limp and bleeding and helpless in her arms, and when pseudopodia of Curaga stretch out to arch him like heart attack victim underneath them, when his eyes spring open and find hers and his hand in hers stirs a brief warm response of a squeeze against her own-

She can breathe again.

She is smiling through her tears, and he is smiling back, vaguely, hazily, not because he really understands why he is doing it, but because she is smiling at him, and that is enough for him.

When he closes his eyes again, he is still smiling.

* * *

><p>Presidential Palace<p>

Esthar

The half-moon curve of sterile hospital room that was all she could see through the crack in his slightly ajar door showed her Seifer wearing a pair of hospital scrub pants and nothing else, and Zell seated next to his bed in a wheelchair he had popped upright like a biker attempting a stunt.

When she pushed it open all the way, Irvine looked up from the chair he straddled at the foot of Seifer's bed, and winked at her. "Hey, Quisty. Here to see your man?"

"Hey, Quisty, I thought you promised you weren't going to tell them about that one night! I know I was the most amazing you ever had, but-"

"Shut up, Wuss." Seifer rolled the magazine in his hand up into a long cylindrical tube that he used to beat Zell enthusiastically across the head until Quistis took it away from him, giving them all her best Instructor's frown. She flipped the periodical open to a dog-eared page and sighed, book-marking an image that had been heavily re-touched with bright red Sharpie and flipping the whole thing around to show all three men.

"What is this?"

"Hyne's most brilliant stroke of genius." Irvine replied, sliding his hat up out of his eyes.

"Titties." Seifer offered succinctly.

"We got bored." Zell explained, tipping his chair back again. "It sucks in here, Quisty. The food's crappy, and this weirdo nurse kept trying to stick stuff up my thing."

"That was a catheter, you fucking moron."

"Whatever, dude. You just stick the catheter in and then you're done with it, you know? She was, like, _playing _with it."

"She probably had just never seen one that small before." Seifer snickered.

"Well, I'm glad she's gone." Irvine drawled. "If I had to see Dincht pull out his dong one more time-"

Quistis crossed both arms, shaking her head. "Is it really necessary to subject me to this?"

Seifer smiled up at her, lacing his hands behind his head. "I can subject you to _my _dong, if that's what you want."

"I would prefer," Quistis said dryly, "If all…_dongs _stayed in their respective pants." She flicked a glance at Irvine, who took the hint before she could even say anything, and stood up, adjusting his hat.

"All right, Dincht, let's give these two some privacy." He grabbed Zell's wheelchair by the handles and set all four wheels back down on the ground with a rough smack, jarring his friend.

"Hey! Careful, man. I'm injured. I'm in a wheelchair and everything."

"That you _stole_, ya' asshat, not 'cause you need it." He bumped the door open with his hip, giving Quistis a little nod and a smile as he wheeled Zell out into the hall, the door clicking almost shut behind them. Through the narrow slit of opening he had left behind, she heard Zell squeal 'Oh Seifer, I love you!' in his high-pitched-and utterly horrible-imitation of a woman's voice, and she shut the door the rest of the way on his cackling.

Seifer was staring at her when she turned back around, his hands still behind his head, bare feet crossed at the ankle, the cord of snaking I.V. line connecting his arm to the machine beside his bed swaying just slightly. "Can I help you with something, Instructor?" He kept his voice carefully neutral, but she could hear the strain in it anyway, and she realized with a jolt of astonishment that Seifer Almasy was nervous.

She knotted her hands in front of her, putting this barrier between them like it could hide the thin line of tremor in her own voice. "I just wanted to see how you were feeling. I'm glad you're all right."

He looked up at her with a smirk that lit up his whole face. "Yeah, I got that impression when you threw yourself screaming across my body and offered your virginity to anyone who could save me."

"_What_?"

"Or, at least, that's what Wuss told me. I was unconscious for all of it, unfortunately."

"_What_?" It was the only thing she could spit out, the only word she could even remember how to form, and his smirk became a smile that brightened his face like a little boy's on a long ago beach with waves that ate her sandcastles, and a mother who had never tried to hurt them.

It made her stop, and smile back at him.

He nodded to indicate the little square of open bed space he slid over to make room for.

She eyed that square of crisp-ironed bed sheet like it might bite her, and he rolled his eyes.

"Tch. What do you think I'm going to do to you?"

She smiled very faintly, because a part of her was still hearing his voice the way it sounded in that long echoing hallway, incoherent as an alcoholic's. "I don't know. I'm never quite sure what you're going to do, Seifer." That at least was the truth; the other one, the certainty that was still a muffled afterecho of pain inside her chest, utter conviction that those eyes had just closed for the last time-that one she wasn't ready to admit to just yet.

That was a nightmare that still roused her breathless and sweating and panicking from her bed, three days later.

"Sit down, Trepe. I'm not gonna' bite you, for fuck's sake."

It was not him that concerned her; it was this newfound…affection for him, this uncomfortably persistent relief that was more than just the generic alleviation of anxiety she would feel for any wounded comrade. She didn't know what to do with it, how to handle or approach it, and it became a bow tie of unease inside her gut that she could not seem to loosen.

She could not stop seeing the top of that shining blonde head, patterned in scrawls of red like lines of vein.

Finally, with a sigh, Quistis seated herself gingerly on the edge of his bed.

The arm with the IV line in it came down over her head in a loop of loose embrace that terminated at her waist, and pulled her back against his chest.

Her heartbeat picked up very quickly, thundering inside her chest like cage-trapped bird, and she felt his lips against her hair go into a little curve of smile that brushed his mouth across the top of her head.

She stared down at his hand, splayed out across her stomach and banded in lines of scar like pale curves of wedding ring, little stars of smaller disfigurement here and there standing out against his skin. It was undoubtedly a soldier's hand, patched over in thick scabs of callus that made it catch against the material of her shirt, and it made her feel secure, content-

She didn't want to think about it.

His chest against the curve of her spine was very warm, and very hard.

"So, Trepe." he said casually, conversationally, and she felt herself go tense against him, that heavily-muscled arm tightening just fractionally on her waist like he was afraid she might try to escape. "The doctors told me there's a good chance the hemorrhaging might have damaged my short-term memory a little. They said it's normal to not remember much that happened over the last few days."

"That's a possibility; you were very out of it for the last few minutes where you were conscious anyway. It would be entirely understandable if you don't remember everything that happened."

He gave a sudden sharp yank that flipped her sideways in a violent little twist that he stopped with his other arm, and now she found herself staring up at him from where she lay half-draped across his lap, one cheek pressed up against his chest.

The hammering in her chest had gone turbocharged.

"I do remember."

She tried to swallow, but something in her throat would not go down, and all she could do was lie there blinking up at him, her mouth parched-desert dry and her pulse a frantic discordant drum rhythm in the side of her neck. His hand came down to brush hair from her eyes, and when it grazed her cheek in a smooth arc of follow-through, he left it there for a moment. "I-"

He cut her off. For once it did not irritate her, because she was not sure what she had been about to say anyway. "I remember what you said about getting me out being more important to you than getting Leonhart out."

"I…did say that, yes." She felt a faint prickle of heat begin to crawl up both cheeks, and tried to sit up.

He held her where she was without any visible effort, and his voice had gone cold and tight and detached like he was holding himself braced for something unpleasant, digitized aloofness like voice alteration software that did not match his eyes.

They were uncharacteristically vulnerable, and raw as Irvine's uncomprehending focus on the pale wax doll of his girlfriend in her coffin.

She felt her whole face soften, and reached up to lightly touch the line of his jaw where it swept back and up toward his ear.

"Did you mean it, or were you just saying it to get me out of there?"

"I meant it." she said quietly, and the smile this brought to his face reached his eyes. This was the smile he had given her in the eyeblink of semi-coherency that was his last before his lids came down for what she had been convinced was the final time, and she gave it back to him without even really realizing it. It was an instinctive smile, irrepressible reaction like the pick-up of drum-roll pulse inside her chest, building toward a crescendo.

* * *

><p>He was so fucking, ridiculously happy, Wuss could have flopped his dick out right then and there and he wouldn't have given a shit. He wouldn't have even <em>noticed<em>.

Seifer leaned down before she could change her mind.

He pulled her up to face level with him and the IV line in his arm gave a brief little sting of warning that was the final alert he would get before it pulled all the way out of his arm; Seifer yanked it out himself and let it swing with a low smack up against the side of the machine. He was sick of that goddamned thing shifting around inside him every time he twitched, anyway.

He didn't start out with a hesitant little kiss that would let him cautiously test the waters this time.

He had her face in his hands and his body pressed tight up against hers and he wasn't coming up for fucking air until she made him.

Unprepared, Quistis fell back with a hollowly echoing clang against one of the bed rails, a little noise of pain murmuring out from the back of her throat that made him pull back, just slightly, with an expletive he muttered against her lips. "Sorry, I didn't-"

"It's all right." she said breathlessly, and then she pulled him down on top of her.

She had her back arched and those fucking breasts pushed right into him, and when he slid her shirt up over her stomach and from there all the way over her head to land fluttering in a crumpled heap to one side of his bed, she didn't stop him.

He unhooked her bra with hands that shook like a virgin's.

She flushed as he pushed the straps down with his thumbs and brushed a light graze of a kiss across her right nipple, and when she closed her eyes and arched harder, he did it again, using his tongue this time.

Quistis buried her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, panting.

He could feel his dick like a fucking signpost between them, and when she reached down and brushed it shyly, hesitantly with her fingers, not looking at him, Seifer buried his face in her neck and shuddered out a sigh that became a low roll of a moan in the back of his throat.

She wrapped her fingers around his chin, and angled his face up to hers. She kissed him like she wasn't quite sure she was doing it right, and it still went all the fucking way through him, her tongue tracing careful little patterns across his own that made him want to rip her pants off and fuck her until she came with a convulsive ripple around him, hissing his name between her teeth.

He pulled back from her mouth, moving down to her collarbone and from there to her breasts again, running his hands and then his tongue over them. When her hips pushed reflexively up into his, he slid his hand around underneath her and dug his fingers into her ass, hard, grinding their pelvises together. He rolled one of her nipples into his mouth, lightly kneading it with his teeth until she gave a sharp little gasp and clenched a hand spastically against his shoulder, her hips pistoning up in another little stroke across his dick that nearly made him fucking lose it.

Seifer wrapped his hands around her waist and shoved her back just slightly, putting the inch of space between them that he needed to let reason slowly push its way back inside his head. "Are you sure you want to-"

She pushed her hips back into his, purposefully this time, her cheeks pink but her eyes coolly steady behind those glasses. "Yes. It's all right. Just…go slowly, please."

He moved his hands from her hips to her face, gently taking off her glasses and folding them carefully before placing them on the table beside the hospital bed. "If it hurts…just tell me, ok? I'll stop." He wasn't at all sure how he was going to fucking manage that with his dick inside her after a couple years of self-inflicted abstinence, but he'd scrape the self-control up from somewhere. Maybe it wasn't his strongest suit, but he'd manage somehow.

For her.

Seifer took a deep breath and unbuttoned her pants, peeling back the two flaps of it to kiss the skin he exposed, just above the line of her panties.

And just like that, as he looked back up the line of her body to find her eyes, he saw his mother smiling down at him.

_No. _

His heart became a rough frictal slide against his ribcage.

_-such a good little boy seifer mommy loves you very much you know that right mommy loves you-_

He felt sudden, brutal tears burn his eyes, because she was even taking this moment away from him. She was still here, still fucking everything up years after she had made them kill his mother and it wasn't fair, it wasn't _goddamned fair_-

Quistis propped herself up on her elbows, frowning. "Seifer?"

He moved very slowly away from her, sitting up straight, his hands coming up to make fists against his thighs.

_-seifer good little boy hold still be very quiet you don't want to make mommy mad do you just be quiet little boy be quiet my little knight-_

He turned his face away from her, and he had to cough a thick wad up from his throat that turned his voice into something hoarsely unrecognizable. "I can't do it." He ran a hand viciously down his face, like that could just scrape away everything, his scar and his tears and the stiff flex of the throat he couldn't make swallow around the lump in it, and when he looked back up at her, he could feel his face beginning to crumple.

Seifer whipped his legs over the side of the bed and spun himself to a stop using his feet against the floor as brakes, his elbows on his knees and his forehead in both hands.

He heard her quietly re-dress herself in the silence.

He couldn't blink those fucking tears away, so he kept his head down and his shoulders bowed, and when she set one soft hand down across his shoulder, he twitched away from it, because his mother's voice was back in his head, whispering for him to shatter it.

He just wanted someone to feel the same damn way he did.

But not her. Never fucking her, so he wrenched himself out from underneath those fingers offering their light pressure squeeze of undeserved sympathy, and he slid down the bed until there was as much space between them as he could possibly create on the narrow frame.

"Do you remember what you said to me about Matron?" Quistis asked very softly. "What she did to you?"

His stomach lurched. "I was halfway fucking delusional, Quistis; I didn't know what I was saying."

"So it isn't true? That she-"

"Fucked me?" he asked roughly, still keeping his forehead carefully snugged into both palms so she couldn't see the look on his face. "Is that what you want to know?"

There was a long, long pause before she began speaking again. "Before, on the balcony…you hesitated then, too. As soon as things began to get more…intense." He heard the bed squeak underneath her and her boots hit the floor with a hollow _clop _that became a ripple of cavern acoustics in the small, silent room.

"Maybe I'm impotent." he snarled.

"I don't think so." Quistis replied, and there was a little of that wry twist back in her voice now; he didn't bother to look up, because he had to keep hiding his face from her so she wouldn't just what a sniveling little pussy Seifer Almasy really was, because he could still feel those tears leaking between his fingers, and he couldn't fucking _bear _to let her become aware of them too.

"Seifer." A hand touched the back of his bent head, very gently. "Maybe you should talk about what happened during the war. It might help."

So she could see the same fucking thing he watched stare him back from the mirror he could barely stand to face some mornings, stunted and ugly and tainted, a pathetic fucking wreck of a man who let a woman wearing his mother's face rape him, who sometimes could not comprehend the black and white line between rapist and victim that had gone grey-area blurry with the thundering blood-pulse of his orgasm spilling everything he was into her-

He had to cough again, so that when he spoke his voice didn't break up completely, the way it kept trying to. "You don't want to know about any of it."

She sat down right next to him, and through his fingers, he caught a peripheral view of her hands folding together in her lap. "I do if you want to talk about it."

She'd look at him differently, with the same disbelieving disgust his mother had on those rare occasions Ultimecia gave them both back their presence of mind, when they came to joined at the hips, his dick buried to the hilt and her hand clenched against the wiry knots of shoulder muscles bunched up under her fingers as he thrust. She'd never fucking touch him again, and he was so fucking disgusting he couldn't even blame her, couldn't even fault her. Because who the hell wanted that? Who the _fuck _wanted the used goods she had made him into, bargain bin trash heap, cheap fucking junk you couldn't give away, because no one in their right goddamned mind wanted it?

Quistis put her arms lightly around him, laying her cheek down against his bent neck. "Seifer, please talk to me." she whispered.

"I can't." he insisted, and now his voice did crack; her arms tightened around him until suddenly she became the only thing holding him together, until suddenly he was a fucking dam breaking and she was not even close to adequate enough to keep all the pieces of Seifer Almasy together-

And, humiliatingly, he began to sob.

Not a couple of sniffles, a brief loss of control that he could quickly contain before she even noticed it-stupid asshole kid bawling like the variety Wuss had employed regularly as a child, his eyes and his nose and his mouth all fucking running, his shoulders jerking in twitches of hiccup that physically hurt him, and there was so much fucking _pain _inside of him, so much goddamned grief that went on forever until he was no longer sure where it ended and he began-

And through it all she just sat there, pressing his face to her neck and stroking his hair, and he realized again just how fucking much he loved this woman, just how much he would bend or break or destroy the whole world just to save her-shit, just to see her fucking _smile_.

It scared the shit out of him.

"It wasn't all her." he tried to say, his voice a hard dry sandpaper rasp in his throat. "Sometimes I'd just lay there…let her ride my dick and pretend I was somewhere else, but sometimes…sometimes I was an active fucking participant in it. Sometimes I _wanted _it, even though part of me knew it was Matron, even though when she left I'd-" His hand came up and he knuckled tears from his eyes, smearing them through his lashes as more came to take their places, and for a very long time he stayed like that, his face pressed into the soft hollow of her throat and his shoulders jerking inside the loose circle of those arms. "Sometimes she treated me like Matron did, and she was so fucking nice to me that sometimes I started to forget what she really was. I did things just because she asked me too and not because she manipulated me into them, because she was my mother. And I loved her."

He wiped his eyes again. "I really did. Even after everything she did, everything I had to do for her-_to _her, every time she made me beg her like a fucking dog, or kill someone because they'd fucked up or just because they annoyed her-I still loved her. I'd just think about the orphanage, the goddamned beach and the cookies she used to bake us and the stories she told and all I could think was that there had to be some reason she was doing this to me. Eventually, she'd break free or whatever and we could live happily ever after, because that's what the fucking stories said, so I kept waiting because she always used to tell us all the time how much she loved us, and I kept thinking if she loved me, she'd save me. She always fucking promised to keep us safe, you know? Maybe she didn't-" He had to pause, and steel himself. "Maybe she didn't love me the way she did the rest of you. I was a little fucking ass; maybe if it'd been you or Dincht or Leonhart, anyone but me-maybe she would have broken free of that bitch for you."

Seifer felt Quistis shake her head against him, and when she gently peeled his face from that warm safe hollow he didn't want to leave, he looked up to see blue eyes full of tears that she smeared away with the sleeve of her shirt. He helped her do it, using his thumbs, his heart rolling over in his chest and his throat constricting itself into a tight little pinhole all over again.

When she grabbed his wrists, he let her use them as leverage to pull him in close enough to kiss.

All he could taste between them was salt.

"It didn't matter who it was." she told him quietly when she pulled back, brushing hair out of his eyes. "It could have been any one of us-Ultimecia had too great of a hold over her for Matron to break. She wasn't any match for a sorceress. It didn't have anything to do with you, Seifer. You have to understand that."

He looked down away from her, swallowing very hard. "I love you."

She smiled softly, fingering more hair from his eyes. "You've already said that."

"You don't get it though…how much." He scratched the back of his neck, squinting his eyes in a glare that pierced the far window and its bare-metal strip of smooth-sanded pane. His hands came together in a knot he clasped between his knees, afraid to look at her.

She spent a long time digesting that. "Well, then, I hope I'm deserving of it."

* * *

><p>In her dream, Adel came for her again.<p>

And Laguna did not.

She passed her childhood a science experiment, lab rat test animal, and when Adel began to pick and prod the fraying strands of her sanity, everything that was Ellone Andrin came unraveled.

One day, she was a happy carefree child in a small town tavern with a mother who loved her and an uncle who adored her, and she did not have any nightmares. She played piggyback and hopscotch and picked flowers for her beautiful smiling mother who had never been more beautiful and had never smiled more than when the handsome young soldier was around, and she knew together all three of them would live happily ever after.

And then the woman came, and took her away.

And her life became a dark dank tunnel with monsters and shadows and no end in sight, until one day that woman became the end, was suddenly the only light she could see, and slowly, piece by piece, she began to forget that tavern with its slanting window-slit beams of sunlight.

She began to forget her mother, and the soldier. And that was all right; that was perfectly fine, the woman assured her, because she did not need them.

She had a _destiny_. And her mother and the soldier-they were chess pawns. Chattel. Shackles on her ankles, and on her wrists, weighing her down, holding her back, and she was so very pretty, she was so very, very special that would be a shame. A travesty.

Together, they came forward to burn the world.

There was a pretty blonde boy with a knight's sword, and a beautiful blue-eyed princess who coaxed him out of following, out of kneeling, and so the woman killed her.

But she did not take care of it herself, as Ellone would have. Instead she made the pretty blonde boy do it himself, putting his sword dead center between those blue, blue eyes and pushing pushing pushing as he sobbed and screamed and tried to stop himself, as he slipped in her blood and her brains and threw himself gasping for air over her body.

Ellone watched in fascination, and she learned.

And when the pretty blonde boy turned on them with hate in his eyes and tears on his face, she made him reverse the sword he swung like falling guillotine for her throat, and turn it on himself.

It went all the way through his spine, and with a little expert wrench, she made him cut the spinal column, so that he folded like broken stringless puppet across his princess.

She let him watch her smile as he died, his princess underneath him and that gleaming line of knight's weapon through his back, pinning them together forever.

His lids became a seizure flicker of REM twitch, and when his head sagged forward and red-tinged foam became a smear of gloss finish across his lips, the woman looped his princess' arms around him, and together they ceased to exist in a ragged halo of crimson that was part him, and part her.

Beautiful.

* * *

><p>Drool had glued her face to the book she'd fallen asleep over. When she yanked back with a startled little moan, the page underneath her cheek came free as well with a sharp tear that pulled Zell's head up from his magazine, and creased a line of frown down his forehead.<p>

"You ok?"

Self-consciously, she smoothed her hair, tucking it behind her ears. The smile she gave him was bright and glittering and false, and she knew he could tell. "Fine."

He set his magazine down.

He slipped his chin into his hands.

She held the book up with a sigh, squinting at the damage. It hadn't been anything horrible interesting, just a generic romance with a busty heroine and well-endowed hero that she had tried to escape into, that she had attempted to use to replace Ward's silent staring eyes and her uncle's grief-aged face, and it had not worked anyway. She folded the torn page inside the binding with a little frown before she shut the entire thing around it and laid it down on the table between them, rubbing her eyes.

He would not stop staring at her.

Before, this had never bothered her. Before, she had hardly even noticed, but now-

Now, his eyes became a prickle of awareness against her neck, and across the spike of heat she could feel beneath her cheeks. It was mostly just relief, that he had come back to them after all, that Zell Dincht had not become another Ward Zabac or Selphie Tilmitt, staring emptily up at her from silk-layered corpse bed, and yet-

She had not noticed, before, how very warm his hands were where they cupped hers between them. And his smile-it had not gone all the way through her the way it did now, what had once been just familial affection now something that she did not quite know how to respond to.

"Thinkin' about Ward?" he asked quietly, keeping his callused hands in a rough dome over hers, his thumb flicking forward and back over the humps of her knuckles.

They poked up like gravestones, bloodless, cadaver white.

She gave him a sad little smile and a head shake he did not believe.

His forehead crinkled up as he looked away. "I'm sorry I couldn't save him. I wanted to; I was right there watching it. I probably should have-" His shoulders went very tight underneath his shirt, and she watched him gather the pieces of his composure back up with his lips in a thin rigid line that hurt her chest.

She shook her head again, more vehemently this time. "Kiros has beat himself up enough; don't start doing it too. You're lucky to even be alive. Ward knew." Ellone told him softly, blinking back tears. "He knew what he was getting into, twenty years ago when he became a soldier, and he knew what might happen…that day." She squeezed his fingers, and tried out another smile that he attempted to return, reaching out with one hand to brush the hair he had not bothered to arrange up in his usual spikes from his eyes. "How's Seifer doing?"

His lips flickered just a little, and this time there was a hint of authenticity there that warmed the chill in her gut.

She curved the hand she had used to sweep hair from his eyes back over his, and smiled at him.

They sat there like that for a moment, his tattoo and his eyes and his nose crinkling the way they did when he smiled with his whole face, when it lit up like the sun through the window at his back, and her heart gave a startled little thump.

"Quisty's with him right now. He's doin' good-came out of the surgery just fine. Luckily Almasy's got a hard head and the bleeding wasn't serious enough to kill him. They're probably having a moment right now." His smirk dug a little hole in his cheek.

"I went to see him a couple of days ago, but he was sleeping." Most of the rest of her time had been spent hovering protectively around Laguna's office, trying to force him to sleep and eat, and making a few brief, unsuccessful attempts to reconcile father and son. Squall, relegated to crutches with a broken ankle, proved as stubborn as usual, and eventually, temporarily, Ellone had given up. He'd come around in his own time-or so she had assured Laguna, because that was what he had needed to hear, even if it wasn't the truth.

Maybe she could persuade Quistis to help her gang up on him. _She _would certainly back down with an enraged Quistis Trepe on her case.

Ellone watched Zell finger the faint white lines of healing tissue running the column of his throat, and frowned.

She was tired of thinking about death and grief and suffering, of children who were not saved but were instead used, were instead twisted and bent out of shape, and she was sick of trying not to relive the eternal four days in which she had made herself come to terms with the fact that Zell Dincht was gone.

She scraped back her chair.

Another little frown line wrinkled up the skin between his brows.

"Let's go find Squall and Irvine, ok? I was thinking…do you remember when we were kids, back at the orphanage? How there was only one working TV station that Matron wouldn't let us watch anyway, but on Fridays, that station played movies all night long and sometimes she'd let us stay up late with candy and popcorn and watch them? I think we should do that." She smiled across at him. "For old time's sake."

"Almasy used to put popcorn down my pants, and then tell Matron I did it when he got in trouble."

Ellone smiled again. "We'll let Quistis and Seifer have some time alone. You won't have to worry about any popcorn in your pants." she teased him.

Zell's eyes crinkled up at the corners again. "Yeah. It'll be nice, you know? Let's find somethin' really crappy, forget about all this shit that's going on for a while."

She nodded, and for the first time in a very long time, the smile that lit up her face felt real, unforced, and the warmth it started in her chest spread into her throat and from there to both cheeks, faint cosmetic flush she hoped he didn't notice.

It was not until they were halfway down the hall that she realized they were still holding hands.

With an awkward little cough, she slipped her fingers out of his.

* * *

><p>City-broken skyline became a blaze of nuclear white-out, this time of the day.<p>

The massive shape that surged across the sky sliced sun glare from his eyes, and left him blinking up at it.

Squall made a canopy of one hand over his eyes, frowning up into that mid-noon inferno, leaning his crutches up against the balcony's railing and setting one elbow down beside them, his ankle in its cast giving him a brief reminder twinge.

He looked down at it with another little frown, bringing his hand slowly down.

The airship throwing Esthar into starkly abrupt night moved ponderously beyond the range of his peripheral vision, and the sun emerged in all its glory once more, throwing every new disfiguration spattering his hands into harsh, unflattering relief.

He wondered what Rinoa would think of them.

Before, he had never particularly cared about these little knurls of ruined tissue standing out in knobs of mismatched white; they came with the training, the lifestyle, and he had paid them about as much attention as Almasy tossing little rolled-up balls of homework assignment at the back of his head. They simply had no bearing on who Squall Leonhart really was, and the man he intended to become.

And then he met Rinoa, and suddenly he wanted-he _needed-_to know everything about them; what she saw when she looked at them, and how they felt sliding across her soft, soft cheek skin. How they made her feel, tangled up in her hair and the sheets braided into twists of manacle around their entwined legs, whether she hated or loved or wanted them gone.

He made one hand into a fist, watched them bulge and then flatten out again.

He stared up into the sky again, and he thought about her.

Tatter of blue shirt tail fluttering out behind her in the field that belonged to them: that was what he saw in the flashes of robin's egg between scudding cloud bank.

The footsteps that rang out behind him swung Squall awkwardly around, his hobbling spin propped up by the railing he had to clutch until his knuckles became white-shot with the strain of it. The sun above him haloed Kiros Seagill and the permanent half moons of sleepless eye bag that aged him ten years, and Squall relaxed just fractionally.

He turned himself carefully back around.

Kiros stepped up beside him at the railing, and held up a pack of cigarettes under Squall's nose, the seal still unbroken. "You mind?"

He shook his head stiffly. "I didn't know you smoked."

His father's friend punctured the cellophane wrapping with a bitten-off thumb nail, and tapped one out into his palm. "I don't, really. I hear they're great for stress. Kinda' think a little nicotine is beyond fixing any of this shit, though." He sighed. The lighter he slipped from his pocket flickered card trick quick in his hand, and then was gone again. "Don't tell your dad, huh?"

Squall said nothing.

Kiros tapped ash over the side of the balustrade, and spent a long, long time staring down after it. "You ever gonna' talk to your dad?" He exhaled a long ribbon that unfurled into a corkscrew of white, and became a tail of meteor streak across flawless mid-afternoon blue.

Squall said nothing.

Kiros knocked another speck of cinder from that titian cherry, and wiped stray hair back from his eyes. "Look, kid, I don't think you're cruel."

"I'm not a kid." Squall interrupted him tightly.

Kiros flicked a brief sideways glance at him. "Fair enough. But if you don't want to get treated like one, you gotta' stop acting like one, huh? You've seen more crap than most guys twice your age will deal with in a whole lifetime, and yet you can't get over this teenage angst bullshit. It's killing your dad." he said quietly. "He had to bury a good friend just a week ago, and he's feelin' the noose tightening. We all are. And all he wants is a chance to know his son. You're all he talks about most of the time. Maybe you just don't care, but I think what's really going on is you think he abandoned you, right? You're pissed off. Understandable. You spent your childhood in an orphanage convinced both of your parents were dead, and then you found out your dad was alive the whole time, and you thought he didn't want you. Hard blow to take. Doesn't excuse being a hard-nosed little asshole, though. Your dad never even knew your mom was pregnant with you, and when he found out, when he realized he had a kid out there somewhere in the world, he tore it apart. He did everything he could to find out where you and Ellone had been taken. None of your mom's neighbors in Winhill could tell him what happened to the two of you after the adoption agency picked you up. The agency wouldn't release records due to 'privacy issues,' but you know what? He was still down there every damn day, trying to get any little hint he could pick up, trying to get them to give him anything. That really sound like a man who didn't give a shit to you?"

Squall's hand on the railing tightened like his jaw.

"You can sit there and brood all you want. You can say whatever it is you're probably saying about me in your head, but you think about this; nobody's around forever. One day your dad's gonna' be where Ward was, and you're gonna' sit there holding him in your arms, and you're gonna' realize you didn't have enough time with him. And you're gonna' regret it. That's exactly what happened to me." he said softly. "But, you know, at least Ward and Laguna and I-we had damn near twenty years together. And what have you got? Some pissy little emo temper tantrum you've let go on too long now." He tapped another flake of ash from the end of his cigarette. "How are you gonna' feel, those assholes come marching in here one day before any of us can stop them, and shoot your dad in the head?"

He was horrified to feel tears in his eyes. They spread an ache like sledgehammer blow inside his chest, a reverberation that touched everything inside of him.

It was not that simple.

For most of his life, he had hated this man, his bumbling idiocy and his inept klutz's antics and that glycerine-slick politician's smile, flawlessly toothpaste commercial perfect. This man who was supposed to be his father, who had missed every milestone, every lost baby tooth and lonely birthday surrounded by foster brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers who loved him and yet could not patch the hole inside him-this man was a stranger to him.

And he hated that most of all.

There was no switch he could flip, no simple flick of power lever that would turn off this nuclear hatred he had let build and burn and flare up in spurts for most of his life. He couldn't just love his father; didn't they _understand _that?

He wanted to. There was an earnestness in that voice and those eyes that he wanted to believe, that he wanted to trust in-

And then the whisper that reminded him about Cid and Matron, raising him because no one else would, because no one else _wanted _him, slammed his conviction down like jailhouse bars over the tentative olive branch he had sometimes wanted to extend, and he retreated back into himself once more. Even the truth couldn't stop that voice, that sibilant little certainty in the back of his mind that this was all a farce, that the small lonely boy sitting on a beachside porch stoop-that was the reality, the _real _truth. The rest was all just carefully-scripted fiction, and his father the moron, his father the _abandoner_-he was the lead actor in that season's most convincing playact.

He could trust only himself, and, much later, a woman who would become terrifyingly, dangerously important to him.

Kiros levered himself off the railing with a push that made the corrugated barrier groan. His cigarette had burned down to a stunted little nub between his fingers, and he looked at it with a frown that pulled his eyebrows together before sending it in a spin like helicopter spiral over the side of the balcony.

He straightened, flicking ash from his fingers.

Squall kept staring out over the city that blurred into a smudge of skyscraper gray and highway ribbon black before his eyes, because he couldn't stand to look at anything else.

"You think about what I said." Kiros instructed him quietly. "But don't drag ass on it for the rest of your life, you got it? Whenever you're ready, he's waiting. Just don't wait too long."

He clapped Squall on the shoulder, staggering him forward a little, leaving him hopping gracelessly in that clumsy cast until he could ease one of his crutches under his armpit enough to stabilize himself. By the time he had fully regained his balance, Kiros was already gone.

He stared after him for several minutes, and then he turned back to that balcony railing and its fringe of solar flare hanging far above in that cloud-layered sky, and he stood thinking with his chin in his hands for a very long time.

* * *

><p>Somewhere between Selphie's death and his own close brush with that sickle-carrying bastard, he had stopped calling her Sis.<p>

He spent most of the movie they watched together trying to figure out what had changed for him.

Irvine on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him and the little square of standard-sized television set flickering patterns of lattice across his face-he didn't even notice these things.

He was subtly studying the profile she presented to him from the twin-sized rectangle of mattress they shared, seeing everything differently, and trying to understand why. It was no literal alteration of physicality, of course-they were the same eyes and lips and sweep of cute button nose as before; it was his mind that perceived them differently, that noticed things it had never paid any attention to before.

A delicate stippling of freckles across that sweep of cute button nose, and the faint, faint pockmark of dimple her left cheek formed when she smiled. These were all things he had vaguely filed away inside the corner of his mind where he relegated unimportant fringe details, and yet now, somehow, they took on new meaning.

He just could not comprehend what it might be.

Irvine let out another snort that became a full-throated chuckle, and glanced back at him with a raised eyebrow.

He was supposed to be laughing at something on-screen, Zell assumed. Problem was, he didn't even know what the hell was happening.

He attempted a half-hearted guffaw that fell very, very flat judging by the look on his friend's face, and so he gave up, leaning back on his elbows and letting his feet dangle loosely swinging over the side of the bed.

His focus on the ceiling went supercritical, like it had every answer to every question he had ever needed to ask, and his hands formed a tightly-knotted link behind his head.

His heart became a snarl of clenched fist inside his chest.

Four days after his rescue, he could still feel the pummeling of war he had gone hammered-flat to his knees underneath, that knurl of ragged-healed knife wound in his back prickling like the ghost pain of amputation. Truth be told, he couldn't remember a whole hell of a lot concerning the events following that particular injury-just Almasy wiping blood from his face, mostly, and the groundquake concussion of battle going on around him like it didn't give a shit that Zell Dincht was probably going to die.

Until he woke up in a blood-lit hell that showed him his new world through red-smoked liquid he was somehow not drowning in.

Until that red-smoked liquid in that blood-lit hell began to slowly, piece by piece, knit him back together, so that he was no longer floundering in the semi-conscious haze between crippling injury and death liberation, so that he gradually, with starts and stops of phase-out awareness, began to realize where he was.

And what would happen to him.

He could see the others in their capsules around him, stunted twists of half-starved children waving skeletal tree branch limbs that scraped long chalkboard screeches down the walls of their prisons. He could hear these screeches somehow, even though he shouldn't have been able to, even though that blood-lit hell muffled everything that was not the colossal ocean roar of his heart in his ears. Even though it reduced him to that scared-shitless child on a long ago beach, hovering at the edge of that same colossal ocean roar waiting for it to finish its ingestion of little Quisty, and come for him next.

He saw faces that studied him with control group detachment, waiting for that red-smoked liquid to finish healing him.

He saw faces of spectral-pale science experiment, pressed up against curves of glass-walled jailhouse like he could save them.

He still saw them sometimes, when he closed his eyes. When he was supposed to be sleeping, when he was supposed to be resting-they were right there under the surface waiting like phantoms, like half-formed memories he could subconsciously recall but did not want to.

They made him stay awake for a very long time, fingering slashes of pale defect in the shape of the number twelve.

That was what they would have reduced him to, if his friends had not saved him. Just another number in the line-up, lab rat numero doce.

He could have kissed that asshole Almasy when he showed up, gunblade in hand and that fuck-the-world look on his face that told the whole damned universe just what exactly he thought of their you-can't-do-that conviction. Almasy had decided, Zell could see in his eyes, to rescue him, and so he would rescue him.

It was that simple. Had to be nice, to be that sure of yourself, that convinced of your own abilities. Sure, he was no connoisseur of humble pie himself, but Almasy-guy wanted the sun to perform a three-act play for his own private amusement, he'd pull it out of the sky with his bare hands, sizzle of third-degree burn be damned.

Kind of a sick irony, in the fact that out of all of them, he had been the one mind-raped by some ambitious bitch bent on fracturing the whole world to fit her own vision of it. Seifer Almasy of the disciplinary committee, Seifer Almasy the child with far-reaching aspirations of his own, Seifer Almasy, three time SeeD failure because he just could not conform, just could not _bend _enough to fit himself within the parameters of what others hoped and wanted and expected him to be-

Kneeling like a dog at their mother's feet.

He shifted his hip where an old bruise had begun to go stiff.

"Man, this sucks." Irvine observed, transferring his hat from his knee to the floor beside it.

"That's the point." Ellone told him. "We all agreed on something horrible, right?" Zell saw her smile mischievously out of the corner of his eye. "I thought All My Gardens fit the bill nicely."

"Well, not that I don't appreciate watchin' some guy try to nail Squall's constipation frown, but I'm gettin' a little uncomfortable with all the homoerotic vibes between the guy playing me and the one playin' Dincht. I have to deal with his inappropriate feelings enough in real life, you know? Guy doesn't know how to take no for an answer."

"Pfft. He leads me on all the time, ya' know?" Zell insisted to Ellone, crossing his feet at the ankles and bobbing them lightly up and down.

"Yeah, you just want to tell yourself that. I'm too pretty for my own good." Irvine lamented. "Hey, uh, is Rinoa puttin' the moves on Quistis?"

Zell popped his head up, then laid it back down in the cradle his hands formed against the rumpled backdrop of her bedcovers. "Looks like it. I don't think I've ever seen her use her whip uh…quite like that." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a soft affectionate smile go across his friend's face.

"Girl playin' Selphie even kinda' looks like her, don't you think?"

Ellone scooted forward to the edge of the bed, and gave him a shoulder squeeze of consolation that made him tilt his head back in a brush of familial kiss he grazed along one cheek.

Her smile squeezed Zell's stomach into a tight little knot that felt like envy, but could not possibly be.

He sat up suddenly, the springs in her bed giving a butchered pig-squeal of protest, and clapped both hands down on his knees. Something on the TV caught his attention, and he leaned forward with a little irritated frown, lacing his hands across his knees. "Hey, that asshole playing me doesn't even know what he's doing! You don't use the second bunkai from Nana Ju Shi against a knife attack! What the hell?"

"Yeah, Dincht, I wouldn't really be lookin' for any sort of accuracy in this piece of crap. Guy who's supposed to be Almasy is about four feet tall, and there's friggin' duct tape on his 'gunblade.' And, ya' know, there's the whole thing where Squall's carrying his baby and Rinoa decides to get revenge by engagin' in certain…_acts _with Quistis that I'm not even sure are really legal. Shame the shitty camera work and PG-13 rating don't really let you see a whole lot of what's going on, though. I mean, that part with the whip-that sorta' needs to be elaborated on, don'tcha think? I mean, we get what happened, but there's always room for misinterpretations when you cut to that fade to black crap."

Ellone shook her head playfully at him.

"Whoa! What the hell did that Chocobo just do to me?"

"Haven't you been payin' attention, Dincht? You're havin' a torrid secret affair with Boink there. You're hatching a murder plot against Almasy right now, actually, because the asshole won't just leave your love alone to flourish. He tried to out you to Garden, which led to a confrontation between the two of you that ended with Almasy throwin' himself into your arms and Squall walkin' in on it all, which led to an epic gunblade fight between them, and then while he was laying dyin' in Almasy's arms, the whole thing about carrying his child came out. I couldn't believe you didn't comment on any of that. Where's your head at, man?"

"This movie killed it."

"I've seen worse." Ellone commented, stretching both arms overhead with an arch of her back that he tried not to stare at. "Did either one of you ever watch For Love of Rinoa Heartilly?"

Irvine winced visibly. "Yeah, I saw it. Couldn't even laugh at it, it was that bad. It was pretty funny watchin' Squall almost pop a friggin' hernia when he saw it, though." He chuckled. "Rinoa had to use all her feminine wiles on him to keep him from marchin' down to the studio that put it out and ripping the producer's lungs out through his ass."

"Why was he so pissed off about it?" Zell asked.

"It didn't portray Rinoa in a very…flattering light." Ellone explained.

"She was sorta' a street-trolling prostitute. Who was actually a man. Who'd do anything for a line of crack, because it pissed his/her old man off. Who-ah, hell, I can't even remember all of it. Whoever made it had a real bone to pick with little Ms. Heartilly, that's for sure."

Ellone stretched across Zell to reach the remote on the far-side nightstand, her arm brushing his chest, and he leaned back just slightly, just subtly, putting enough space between them to clear the haze from his head and that tight squeeze of fist clench from his chest, back again and annoyingly insistent. She came up with it in her hand and a little smile on her face, and the screen shrank to a flyspeck of white-static glow, and from there to solid black.

"What do you think Quistis and Almasy are doing right now?" Irvine asked with a little mischievous sparkle in his eye.

Zell made a gesture with his hands, snickering.

"Dincht, come on, not in front of the lady."

Ellone shook her head with a little smile. "You're as bad as Uncle Laguna, Irvine. I'm a full-grown woman; I'm sure I can take a little innuendo and some hand gestures."

"That's not an excuse for Dincht bein' gross. Those two…you think they got a chance?" Irvine flicked stray strands of hair from his eyes. "Never woulda' put the two of them together, myself, but when I think about it…sorta' makes sense, you know? Quisty'd be good for him. Keep him in line. I mean, as much as Almasy _can _be kept in line, which ain't a whole hell of a lot, but if anyone can manage it even a little bit, it's Quisty."

Out of the corner of his eye, Zell saw Ellone look down at her hands, smiling. "If Seifer loves her, and I think, watching him these past several days, that he does, then I think they do. He was always very willful, even as a little boy."

"He wants somethin', he's goin' to get it, whatever he has to do." Irvine added softly. He readjusted his ankles across one another, flipping them so they formed a mirror-image reverse of their former position, left over right. "Ya' know, I've been doin' a lot of thinkin' lately, after…after I lost Selphie. Always knew this before, but losin' her just kind of reiterated the fact that we don't get to live long cushy lives, you know? No porch swing, no grandkids, no nothing' 'cept something honorable at the end, hopefully. But Almasy's so Hyne damned stubborn, I could see him spitting in the eye of all that. He'll probably live to be a hundred, Quisty naggin' him the whole way." He chuckled quietly.

Zell cracked his knuckles, loudly. "Almasy's a turd. Guy saved my butt, though, so I can't hate him too much. Wish he'd get over the whole 'Chicken Wuss' thing though." He scowled.

"I just hope they're happy." Ellone said.

"Yeah. Long as Quisty's happy, I don't care who she's with. And if Seifer hurts her, Kinneas an' I will just beat the crap out of him."

Ellone shook her head, but she was smiling again. "Just don't be too hard on him. "I think Seifer's probably very, very new to all of this. He's probably terrified." She ran a hand over her hair, tucking a wayward piece behind her ear, and he watched her do it out of the corner of his eye, hoping she didn't notice.

That dimple made something inside him coil uncomfortably, something that felt like his whole Hyne damned chest but couldn't be, because this was Sis, Sis with the big brown eyes and the kindly maternal smile wiping a smear of purloined chocolate chip from his mouth, and he didn't for a moment understand what the hell was happening.

All he was certain of, was in that pulse of blood-lit hell, that eternal red-smoked nightmare that went on for a second, a day, a year-

He had spent most of his time thinking about her.

* * *

><p>Hours later, she left Seifer fetal-curled in exhausted sleep across his disheveled hospital bed, and went to find Ellone.<p>

Her knock brought the young woman to the door, rubbing sleep from her eyes, her smile blurry around the edges. "Quistis?"

"I'm sorry. Did I wake you?"

"It's ok. Do you need help with something?" She pushed the door to her room wider, gesturing for Quistis to step inside. "Sorry it's a little messy; Zell and Irvine and I were watching movies. Like when we were kids." She smiled. "We would have invited you, but I figured you and Seifer-" She broke off as Quistis blushed, smearing another layer of slumber from her eyes. Her smile belonged to the older sister Quistis remembered from a long ago beach with a mother who did not have shadows in her eyes, and a little blonde boy with a smile as bright as the perfect lemon wedge of sun slice in the sky far above.

That sky had never bled sunset. It only smudged beautiful painter's shades of venetian red and yellow ocher and mars violet across flawless cotton puffs of clouds, nightfall she could watch for hours on that weathered front porch with her feet swinging over the side. Somewhere along the way, dusk had become clot smears of fresh gore, artfully blended with raw-umber splashes of vomit, because that was what her life had condensed itself to, years later. Quistis Trepe's childhood died the same swift violent death the sun suffered each day, and that little girl watching her mother's sky go firework brilliant became a woman whose whole life was one long reek of spell-charred death throe and severed gushing limb, spurting the same cadmium red Selphie Tilmitt bled out in Irvine Kinneas' arms.

Sometimes, very deep down inside where all the ugly things she pretended were not part of her swam and thrashed and cried out to make themselves known, Quistis Trepe hated her mother for taking sunsets away from that little girl.

"Anyway, I thought the two of you could use some time alone." Ellone snapped the door shut behind her, and Quistis seated herself carefully in the chair in front of her foster sister's slightly disorganized desk.

She folded her hands tightly together in her lap. "I need you to do something for me."

"Of course, Quistis. What do you need?"

"I want you to send me back, into Seifer's consciousness. During the war."

Ellone frowned as she sat herself down on the edge of her bed, directly across from Quistis. "Why?" A little wrinkle of confusion plowed a furrow between both eyebrows, creasing the smooth skin there.

"I want to know what he went through."

Ellone rubbed the frown line between her brows. "Quistis…I don't know exactly what happened between Matron and Seifer during the war, but I visited Matron in D-District, and she told me about some of what went on-and I don't think she even mentioned the worst things. Whatever Seifer had to endure…wasn't pleasant. If I send you back, you'll experience it exactly as he did, just like it all happened to you."

The only sign of the rigidity she had to maintain to keep the coolly unruffled look on her face was a slight tightening of her fingers, going bleached-bone pale across the knuckles. "I understand." Quistis said calmly. "I feel that I need to…understand him better. Whatever happened to him, however bad it was…if he had to endure it, then so will I."

Ellone rubbed the frown line harder. "Are you sure?"

She had, in fact, never been more sure of anything in her life. "Yes."

"All right. Close your eyes; it'll be less disorienting that way."

She did.

The world became a swirl of red-tinged nightscape around her, and then nothing.

* * *

><p>Galbadia Garden<p>

2 Years Ago

I forehand Hyperion like an axe into the man's face. The crest of forehead ridge I've just ruined folds in on itself with the cauterized sigh of a blade-sliced trachea.

My mother is smiling at me.

I want to smile back, but staring down at this meat-pile of former human being crumpled at my feet like scatters of fucking garbage, my lips just don't work quite right.

I sling Hyperion over my shoulder.

And this woman who's supposed to be my mother nudges this meat-pile of ruined, shit-stinking soldier like he is something mildly distasteful she just had to scrape off her shoe, and then she turns, and her hands crawl up my chest, and my heart begins a too-fast arrhythmic thunder in my neck that somehow hurts my whole fucking body.

"Good boy." Her smile is my goddamned sun. Used to be, I was my own fucking sun, a nuclear blaze like the world had never seen before, but somehow, along the way, she sucked all of that right the fuck out of me, absorbed it all for herself until she was that sun, that nuclear blaze, until I was just another far-flung nameless planet orbiting her. "Good little boy, Seifer. Mommy's very proud of you."

I can feel a hint of teeth in her kiss, and then her tongue is there, rapist brutal, and for a moment there's this coil of panic inside me, wondering if she wants to fuck me right here in front of this dead watching man whose blood is still a wet-shine streak of red down my blade.

The G. Garden cadets that stand attentively off to either side don't even twitch.

I let her kiss me; I even give a little back, my free hand cupping her ass, but I'm not sure if this is because I want to, or because I'm too much of a sniveling fucking coward to refuse her anything. She's got her hooks in me; one yank and I'm just another meat-pile of blank soldier's stare like this guy at my feet, and I just can't find the fucking balls to let that happen. I'm supposed to _be_ someone-

But so far, all I am is her little bitch.

I've still got a fucking legacy to leave behind, and this isn't big enough, not yet, so whatever she wants, I'll give her. She's my mother, and she's not really going to hurt me anyway-

Except she already has. Except she already _is_, and her fists make knots in my hair that from there trail lines of fire down my back, and Hyperion hits the deck with a loud guillotine _chock _as I push her back by the shoulders.

Her mouth flattens into a thin disapproving line that wraps my stomach around my spine. "Seifer, behave. Mommy doesn't want to have to hurt you, does she? Be a good little boy for her." Her smile is all teeth.

There's this haze like a thin twist of veil across my eyes, slowly lifting. This happens every so often, and it's like a foot in my goddamned balls, booting ripples of shockwave through my whole body. Inside my head a hurricane is building and it howls, it _screams_, and it rips the shutters from my brain and the blinders from my eyes and I realize suddenly, _finally_-

This is not my mother.

I get vague hints of this every so often, when she looks at me like this, like I'm something she's going to fucking eat and there's not a damn thing I can do about it, and there's this scared little voice in the back of my head that reminds me of boy Seifer, telling me this isn't Matron.

Matron never used to look at me like this.

Matron used to kiss my fucking wounds, not create them-

Her hands twist into claws, and she grabs my elbow hard enough to grind the nerves together, shooting numbness up my arm. "_Kneel_, boy."

I keep picturing the flutter of her housedress across line-hung laundry, and that pretty blue-eyed instructor bitch of mine, helpfully passing her new pieces to string up. And maybe it's those blue eyes and the memory of all those detentions she used to give me while Squall fucking Leonhart just sat there at his desk with that bland fucking cow stare-

But suddenly I don't goddamned well feel like it.

"Are you _disobeying _me?"

Do you see my fucking knees bending, whore? I don't say this out loud, but the words are just on the tip of my tongue, and I settle instead for a cold little smirk like the kind I used to give that pretty blue-eyed instructor bitch.

"_Kneel_, little boy; mommy doesn't want to have to punish you."

Two bricks shy of a fucking load isn't visceral enough to describe my state of mind, right now.

The problem is this: I'm a slave. I'm a slavering fucking puppy, begging at her feet for scraps. I know this; she knows this. Fuck, the whole goddamned world knows it by now; everything I was, will be, have ever _wanted _to be-that's all gone now. _All _of it. Every last single goddamned drop, circling this sewer shit-drain that has become my life, and you want to know what that does to a man?

It chews him down to the bone. It rips everything down all the way to the fucking foundation, and when you get there, it's time to start all over again. So you start layering new pieces over the top of that crumpled, all-fucked-to-hell base tier, jumbles of mismatched boulder and edge trimmings of hodgepodge color scheme, rot-cracked sheaves of mold-caked timber and chipped-slate shards of hazardly leaning roof peak-

And you realize when you get to the end of it all, it's a lot goddamned uglier than what you started out with.

And that was no fucking picnic to begin with.

But it's still _mine_, goddammit. Sometimes, for just a moment, I can remember this, and maybe she doesn't like it, but for this one moment where I am sort of just half the man I used to be-

She can go fuck herself, this woman who looks like my mother but isn't.

My knees don't fold, so she kicks them out from underneath me. She nods to those two attentively impervious cadets as her hand forms a fist around my hair, and I feel grips like steel girders go around both my arms.

That meat-pile watches everything through still open eyes.

"Seifer." She takes my chin in her hand, gently like Matron used to, and there's this flutter of doubt in my stomach, making itself into a tight little clench of a knot there. "Be a good boy." Her hand goes down my face in a brush that's part mother's comforting cheek caress, and part lover's stroke.

Last time, this was the part where I got my teeth in her throat.

I won't do that again, because I remember-dimly-what she did to me after that. It's all a blur of clothing tear like fucking flesh rip and those fucking lackeys of her, holding me down, kneeling on my arms where the nerves converge, both limbs going amputation dead while she does shit to me I try not to think about-

"Seifer." She's made her voice into something I can almost buy as my mother's, and I have to swallow very hard. "Be good, boy. Aren't you my brave little knight? Don't you want to make mommy happy?"

There's a fucking lump in my throat that won't go away, because suddenly this woman is back in a sunlit cottage with a book open across her knees, and I'm sprawled at her feet with my chin cupped in both hands like this shitty made-up children's story she's telling me is the fucking gospel-

I swallow again, and hack something up from my throat that might be a reply but is really just a wet cough like pneumonia rasp.

She smiles down at me, and brushes hair from my eyes. "Tell mommy you love her, Seifer. My brave beautiful knight loves me, doesn't he?"

Do I? I don't even fucking know anymore. I'm supposed to-I know that, at least.

"Seifer, tell mommy you love her."

I don't say anything.

She nods again to those blank-faced lackeys of hers, and they wrench my arms out to either side like the fuckers are arranging me for crucification, and inside my sockets my shoulders squeal nails-on-chalkboard protests that make me grit my teeth.

Something like Firaga ignites beneath her hand against my chest, except a million fucking times worse, and I just can't fucking help it.

I scream.

Bubbles of second degree blister crawl underneath my skin where the shirt shreds apart like tissue paper, and she backs off, leaving me retching.

Then she does it again.

I don't know how long this goes on for, but when it's all over, I'm a huddled little ball on that deck underneath her feet, my face streaked with tears and my throat ripped-raw tender, and the eye I crack carefully open shows me little threads of crimson, spreading out across that slant of deck beneath my cheek.

I can't figure out what to do, except keep laying here.

She pulls me up by my hair, but her smile is tender again, confusing the shit out of me.

"You see, Seifer? Mommy doesn't want to have to punish you, but if you can't be a good boy, you have to be; don't make mommy punish you anymore, ok, Seifer? Good little boy-little knight. Give mommy a kiss."

I gag another cough that feels like it just tore my lungs all to shit, spraying blood.

When her mouth brushes mine, I use this split second of distraction to wrap her in a bear hug hard enough to spine crack someone not layered in protective magic, and heave to my feet with a force of fucking will I didn't even realize I had left. One of her lackeys gets a punch in that smacks my kidney hard enough to let me know I'll be pissing blood for a week, but I've already got her at the railing, and just a little tip of leverage will send her over the side to that ground far, far below, and I'd like to see even this bitch recover from a fall like that.

She jabs her nails into fresh-blistered skin that peels open around them, and I go to my knees vomiting.

One of those fuckers knocks me back with an arc of kick that feels like it caves my whole fucking face in, and somehow, I get a hand around his ankle. I yank and put him on his ass, and suddenly there's Hyperion under my hand, cold and solid and welcome as an old friend-

I pick it up.

The blade shrieks across blood-soaked deck wood, and the cadet's eyes go wide.

I punch my gunblade between them like a sniper lining up his shot, and his skull spits brains with a wet echoing plop that coats my hands in shiny gray.

When I stand up, swaying, she is smiling at me again.

My fucking head hurts, my vision going split screen divided, and now there are two of her, and that one on the left-she might be my mother after all. She looks kind, you know? There's this part of me that desperately fucking wants to believe she's freed herself, that she's coming to save me-

And then she backhands me across the face hard enough to send me spinning back to my knees, Hyperion spiraling out across the desk out of my reach, and I know this is not Matron now-

She never hit us. Not even when I pulled the really bad shit, like the time I buried Wuss in the sand but then forgot to leave an air hole, and she found him just barely in time.

I spit up another soggy clump of blood-one of my fucking lungs, for all I know.

The bitch backhands me again, and then a jolt of Demi picks me up like a fucking rag doll and shakes me like a dog playing fetch, and there's the deck under my cheek again, skewering red-painted splinters through my fucking jaw line.

By the time she leans down next to me, I'm twitching out just a few final epileptic spasms, and I can't even try to fight off her hands.

She smoothes the hair back from my eyes.

I'm looking up at her, and I know there's this goddamned pleading on my face that doesn't belong there, that's a level the great Seifer fucking Almasy never should have had to sink to, but I can't fucking help it, because this is supposed to be my _mother_-

This is supposed to be Matron, reading her stories and baking her cookies and bandaging my fucking scrapes, except she's, she's-

I have to shut my eyes, squeeze them down tight until there is nothing left except a thin ribbon of sunlight bright as planetary ignition crawling through my lashes, and inside I'm fucking screaming-

Because this is not what Matron's hands are supposed to feel like. And I can twist and writhe and snap like a wounded fucking dog-

But there's no point, you know? Can't get away from them. I'm not even sure I want to.

So I just lay here, and I fucking take it.

I've become a fucking joke.

* * *

><p>Presidential Palace<p>

Esthar

Present Day

"Quistis?"

She had to blink, and blink again to resolve the room around her into lines of cream-painted wall and blank black slate of powered-down television set, Ellone's troubled face coalescing slowly in front of her. "Quistis, are you ok?"

No.

There was nothing about her that was ok right now.

She prepared the same smile she had given Cid when he took away her license, when he yanked her whole existence out from underneath her like abruptly-displaced throw rug, and she pasted it across her face.

She said, "Yes."

Or at least, she thought she did.

Mostly, she was still staring at a blood-slickened slant of splintered deck wood, cold underneath her cheek.

"Quistis?"

She still had that poorly-constructed smile in place across lips that went rictus-stiff with it. Something generic and poorly-worded and utterly false slipped out between them, and then she was on her feet, her farewell a smear of jumbled reassurances she could not really remember, and she reached the hall with Ellone in the doorway staring after her.

She slipped back inside his room very quietly, shutting the door behind her.

He lay on his side with one hand fisted underneath his cheek, and this childhood pose she remembered from a far-ago life with a far-ago boy who was not yet broken, who had not yet shattered-

It made her stretch out fingertips that trembled very subtly, and brush strands of fallen hair from his eyes.

It made her slump down in the chair pulled up close beside his bed, and sit with her chin in her hand, watching him sleep.

* * *

><p>Laguna rubbed headache from his eyes.<p>

Kiros, sitting across from him perusing a stack of paperwork that had long since passed 'out of control' and was rapidly and perilously heading toward 'mountainous,' looked up from his work, frowning. "What?"

"Another form from Odine. This one's a financial statement tallying up all the damage that was done to his lab during the kids' rescue mission."

Kiros snorted. "Why don't you tell him you'll pay it when he decides 'full disclosure' is in his vocabulary. I want to know what the hell's going on down there; Zell's had some pretty weird stuff to report, these last couple of days. Thought maybe he was just a little confused between everything that happened, but Quistis confirmed all of it. Speaking of which, what's Galbadia's stance on the whole thing?"

"Soldiers were G. Garden drop-outs, supposedly. They were working independently-Galbadia denies all knowledge of their existence there. Odine says he's entitled to employ whoever he wants to employ. I told him he's welcome to employ whoever he wants when it's his own money, and not taxpayer dime footin' the bill for everything. He didn't like that very much; threw a big temper tantrum claiming I was interfering with technological advancements I could not possibly understand, or something like that. Lot a' scientist mumbo jumbo-didn't have a clue what the guy was saying for most of it. I threatened to yank his project funding; he was even less pleased about that."

"Yeah, I'll bet."

"He can't go around letting his 'employees' try to kill SeeDs working for me, and I still want to know how Zell ended up there in the first place. Irvine said it looked like they were just waiting for him to heal up before they started using him for something-he wasn't sure what, but there was some kind of experiment goin' on, apparently. With _kids_, for Hyne's sake. He thought Zell mighta' been the next one in line for whatever the heck it is Odine's doing. I've got the ethics committee on it, but you know how slowly they move, and with everything going on in the city right now…" He sighed and rubbed his eyes again. "This place is falling apart, Kiros." he said softly, staring down at the pen he gripped between fingers that went rigid around it, the frail plastic casing creaking warningly. "And Ward-what did he die for? A government that's falling apart around me? Hyne, Kiros-"

Kiros' voice went very tight. "He died for this city. And for you. And he believed in what he was doing."

Laguna shook his head, wordlessly. He did not know what to say, what to think or feel or _do_-

He could only sit there, massaging his temples and staring down at those mounds and stacks and teetering piles of paperwork, waiting for something to come to him. Waiting for these qualities of leadership, from this politician who was not a politician as trumpeted by a long-ago campaign trail, his head and his chest and his fingers around that pen hurting.

He wanted to know where the hell that man had gone, if he'd even existed in the first place.

Kiros shuffled several sheets from the top of the stack off to one side, underneath the hand he used to pin them carefully in place, his knuckles stark white in the dim spray of lampglow leaking out across Laguna's desk. "I think we gotta' admit there's a traitor here somewhere." he said very quietly. "I don't know who it is or what exactly they're trying to accomplish, but these numbers are fucked."

Laguna blinked a little at his friend's language. It was the kind of epitaph Kiros Seagill brought out only very infrequently, and it meant they were very, very screwed.

"That assassination attempt several months ago? They shouldn't have gotten past Palace security with those weapons, not that many of them. How easily they breached the Palace, a few weeks back? That shouldn't have happened either, not if everyone was on their toes. Yeah, sure, I know they had more than just some disgruntled citizens in there, guys with real training-it still shouldn't have happened that quickly, not without inside help. And these accounts are all being manipulated-subtly; who knows how long it was going on before Ellone caught a discrepancy in one of them, but it's all here. Someone's siphoning money off from several different accounts so nothing looks unusual. There's money changing hands somewhere, and it's high up." He leaned back in his chair, frowning. "It has to be _very _high up, Laguna."

His temples had begun to pound now. "I know. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, running it all over in my head; I keep telling myself I'm just gettin' paranoid in my old age, but I can't ignore all of this anymore. I can't trust anyone here-except you and Ellone, of course. And Ellone…I have to get her out of here, Kiros."

"She's a grown woman, ya' grandmother. She gets to make her own decisions, just like the rest of us."

A soft knock at his door interrupted his next protest, and Laguna set down his pen with a sigh, one hand going back to the migraine pounding a persistent, arrhythmic drumbeat inside his forehead.

"Yeah?"

The sliver of opening that formed between his office and the hall beyond showed him his son.

Kiros pushed his chair back from the desk, and stood up. "I'll give you two some time alone."

He clapped Squall on the shoulder as he passed, and then he was gone.

And there was just his son and ten feet of silence between them, bright and sharp and tangible as the pain that suddenly stuck in his throat. He scraped his tongue off the roof of his mouth, but even free it didn't function quite right, and so instead he just gestured to the chair across from him, his free hand coming down in a grip on the desk that cracked it like a gunshot.

"Uh…come on in."

It was the only thing he could finally manage.

Very slowly and carefully, Squall crutched his way over to the chair Laguna had indicated, but he did not sit down.

He kept his eyes cautiously, neutrally blank. "I was wondering…if you had time…to talk. Sir."

The fist that squeezed his throat moved on to his chest. "Don't call me 'sir.'" he said quietly, folding his hands together on the table between them. "I understand if you're not…ready for anything else, but please don't call me that, Squall."

His son blinked at him.

And very slowly, his stiff-mannequin features relaxed, just fractionally.

He cleared his throat.

He shifted his hands where they squeezed the handles of his crutches very tightly, and then he slowly, carefully, lowered himself into the chair across from his father. "All right, uh…Laguna."

His smile felt like the sun coming out, bright and abrupt and burning away things he had not been able to displace for weeks, for months, because perhaps this was not the teary-eyed reunion he wanted, perhaps this was not the open-armed acceptance he _needed_-

But it was something.

It was, perhaps, a beginning.

**A/N 2: I checked around, but could not find an official last name for Ellone, so I made up my own. If you know of one that does actually exist, please let me know so I can fix that. Thanks for reading!**


	22. Chapter 20

**A/N: The Zell/Ellone development was very, very subtly alluded to earlier on, (blink and you missed it,) but started off a while back as this little niggling 'what if' in the back of my mind. I honestly never pictured them together as a couple, and then all of a sudden my brain started spinning out all these little ideas that came pretty much from nowhere, and I thought, y'know-I'm gonna' see if I can make it work.**

**Mischka, you guys take the time to leave comments that are intelligent and well thought out, so I think it's the least I can do to acknowledge my reviewers in a little pre-chapter shout out. I will admit I have been somewhat disappointed at the amount of feedback this fic has generated, however, what comments have been left have been amazing. It's refreshing to get comments that go beyond 'lol love dis plz updat kthx.' I want you guys to know that I honestly appreciate the time and effort you put into leaving feedback. **

**Jean-chan-as short as your review was, it put a big smile on my face. You used the magic word-and it's funny because just a day or two before I received your review, I was sorting through this fic thinking 'man, I hope people aren't reading this going shit this girl is all kinds of fail at trying to be epic.' So thanks for that. It's nice to see you pop up here and there so that I know you're still out there and I haven't lost you. I don't expect anyone to review every chapter, but when people review once at the very beginning and never say anything again, it always makes me wonder if they jumped ship.**

**Dee-your reviews always make me smile, and I want you to know your words have been hugely encouraging to me. **

**Chapter Twenty**

Presidential Palace

Esthar

"You remember when we were kids and Wuss ate all those cookies and threw up on my bed? I didn't kill him, did I? You keep making me out to be this little asshole, but clearly I was one hell of a fucking gentleman."

"I remember you making several very enthusiastic _attempts _on his life," Quistis replied dryly. "I'm not sure you are qualified for gentleman status just because you didn't succeed."

They were watching the city burn, from the third floor balcony where he could still, somehow, make out ghost shapes of candlelit tabletop and half-formed suggestions of profile, turning away from his feelings.

Her shoulder where it pressed up against his was very warm. Fireglow from the city lit up her face, painting her cheeks in cosmetic stripes that brought out her eyes, and he glanced down at her hand in between them, palm down across the smooth-sanded pavement.

He was reaching to take it when he suddenly lost his grip on his fucking balls again, and draped his hand across his thigh instead, like that was where he'd intended it to go all along.

She glanced briefly over at him and then away again. "What do you think will happen?"

"What do you mean?"

"All of this." A sweep of her hand indicated the bonfire that was Esthar city beyond their sanctuary, and he transferred that palm from his thigh to his knee, leaning back on one elbow. "How do you think it's all going to end?" Quistis asked quietly.

"Bloody," he replied succinctly.

She sighed. "I managed to sort that out for myself. I meant, of course, which do you think will break first? The city or its citizens?" Her voice had gone distantly soft, and now that hand was back on the pavement between them, making him want to touch it.

"Who the fuck knows?" He hunched forward over his knees, frowning, draping both arms across them.

"I'm just…" She sighed again. "I'm very tired of losing people."

He smiled at her. "You didn't lose me, Instructor. Doesn't that just brighten your whole day?"

She gave him a head shake that did not quite hide the little curl of a smile that tugged at her lips, and he slid his hand off his knee now, setting it down right up against hers, trying to make it into a brush she might take as accidental.

Quistis turned to look at him, bonfire red splintering off her glasses in shards of ruby that hurt his eyes, but it didn't take him very long to stop noticing that.

She was smiling at him. "Seifer, if you'd like to hold my hand, I'd prefer if you just hold my hand. Watching you try to be subtle is painful."

He jerked his fingers back with a scowl, tangling them in his hair.

She was still laughing at him when she set her head down against his shoulder, and his heart turned over faultily in his chest. This close, he could smell her shampoo, a hint of vanilla and something faintly tropical-coconut, maybe-and the oiled-leather bouquet that was her weapon.

He slid an arm around her shoulders, his heart a pounding trip hammer against his chest, deafening surf roar in his ears, and when his chin came down on top of her head, that scent intensified, and he closed his eyes to breathe it in.

It drowned out the sharp eye-water smoke reek of the fires beyond the balcony until he couldn't smell anything else, until the rank death stench that had become a permanent resident in his nostrils was suddenly just a faint, faint memory like faded childhood recollection.

And maybe it was sappy as shit, but it was one of the happiest moments of his life.

"What's a secret you've never told anyone before?" Quistis asked him suddenly, and his eyes snapped back open, slitting against the smear of red on the far horizon that became a blinding glare if he stared at it too long.

"I've got a lot of secrets." he said, his voice going tight as they stirred underneath his skin, the shoulder propping up her head going rigid enough to make her pull back with a frown, one hand coming up to adjust her glasses.

"Something _pleasant_. Something no one really knows about you."

He kept his arm around her shoulders, smirking. "You want to know if I wear women's underwear or something?"

Quistis rolled her eyes. "I would prefer to remain blissfully unaware if your preference for undergarments necessitates trips to women's apparel."

"You first, Instructor. Tell me something about yourself you don't want anyone else knowing about, and I'll tell you one of my secrets." He gave her his old-Seifer smile, the one he had beamed from the back of a classroom whenever she became particularly fed up with him, and there was some of her old exasperation back in her eyes now as she turned away to stare out over the railing and into the flame-lit core of the city.

Her cheeks had gone very red, and he lifted an eyebrow.

"My first real kiss was with another woman."

He was pretty sure he'd just swallowed one of his fucking lungs. "Fucking Hyne-are you kidding me, Trepe? You were going around Garden having lesbian experiences and you didn't let me watch? Besides, I thought I was your first kiss-you forget that? Back when we were kids?"

"It wasn't a lesbian experience; a student asked me to stay late after class one day to help her with an assignment she was struggling with, and while I was leaning over her desk reading something on her paper, she lunged at me. I didn't even have any time to react. And no, I don't consider you sneaking too many soap operas and attempting to test out what you saw on me when we were seven years old a real kiss."

He felt his smile spread wider, hurting his cheeks. "Still don't have all your memories back, do you, Trepe?"

He could see her frown out of the corner of his eye. "What do you mean?"

"The cowboy used to sneak those soap operas with me sometimes. We all stayed up late one night with flashlights, huddled under our covers so Matron couldn't see them playing Truth or Dare, and he dared you to kiss one of us. Tongue and everything."

She raised one of her eyebrows. "And I chose you? I remember having better taste as a child."

"Ouch, Instructor. You picked me because I kept giving you shit about not doing it. We both ran to the bathroom and drank a whole fucking bottle of mouth wash between the two of us. Wuss kept telling us we were going to die of cooties."

Quistis looked down with a soft smile that made his fucking heart skip a beat again, and he shifted away from a small pebble that had begun to dig into his ass cheek.

"All right, it's your turn. What's your secret?"

"I didn't need the mouthwash. Just did it because you made a big fucking deal about how nasty it was. I had a big crush on you when we were kids; don't know why, because you were bossy as fucking hell and most of the time I felt like drowning you in the ocean."

"You put everything you could find in my bed. You used to rip the pages out of my favorite books. As soon as I finished building a sand castle, you completely destroyed it."

Seifer shrugged. "Isn't that what boys do when they like a girl? Pick on her? You haven't changed a whole lot, you know. You're still fucking bossy as hell. You grew into a great pair of legs, though. And really nice tits."

She rolled her eyes, shrugging his arm off. "How very charming. If I'm so horribly irritating, why are you interested in me now?"

"Didn't I just tell you about your legs and your tits?"

Quistis rolled her eyes again. "It's encouraging to know that your physical attraction to me manages to trump all of my character flaws."

He had her chin in his hand before she could do anything about it, his lips pressed up against hers in a kiss he let go on for a long, long time, his free hand coming up to brush hair from her eyes and back behind one ear. Seifer heard her breathing go irregular, one soft small hand stretching out to slide up across his cheek and around to the hair at the nape of his neck, and when he opened his mouth, she did the same, hesitantly.

He pulled back just far enough to rest his forehead up against hers, loose coils of hair from her updo tickling his cheeks, and when he smiled he was close enough that just that little twitch of his lips brushed them back up against hers. "I like your character flaws, Instructor."

Her mouth became a thin tight line of displeasure like the sour lemon pucker of an old woman. "Such as?"

"You have to be so fucking perfect at everything that when you monumentally fuck something up, you just pretend it didn't happen. Pubes blew you off for a little doe-eyed princess, so all of a sudden your feelings for him were just 'misinterpreted.' You couldn't make me do my homework if you sucked my dick in the middle of class in front of everyone, so you just wrote a bunch of shit on my files about how I was an unmanageable 'problem student' and called it good."

"_No one _could make you do your homework, Seifer," Quistis said dryly. "That wasn't just my failing."

He ignored that. "You pretend you don't want to smash Rinoa's perky little nose in-" He covered the mouth she opened in protest with one hand. "-and if you tell me you've never wanted to, you're a fucking liar, Instructor. Everyone's wanted to punch her in the fucking nose at some point or another. You can't drive worth shit. You think if someone's not doing something your way, they're doing it wrong. Your classes were fucking boring as shit. The first time you kissed me-for real, not a couple of seven-year-olds groping each other in the dark while Wuss made puking noises-it was clear as fucking day you didn't know what the hell you were doing." He ducked forward to kiss her as he took his hand away, a quick stolen peck he broke off just a second into it, pulling away before she could hit him. "And you know what? Pubes is the biggest fucking moron for turning all that down. And I'm a bigger fucking idiot for not realizing sooner what a stupid dick he was for choosing Rinoa."

She was quiet for a moment, looking out over the railing, strands of hair blowing across her eyes, that beautiful profile utterly unreadable, his stomach a cold hard knot against his spine as he waited for her to decide whether or not she should punch him in the dick.

"I'm not sure whether that was romantic, or whether I should push you over the railing," Quistis said at last, shaking her head and bringing both hands up to cup her chin as she hunched forward over her knees.

"What do I get if you decide it was romantic?"

Her mouth became a wry twist across her face. "It's more what you don't get, which would be Save the Queen down your throat."

"Does the fact that I'm really ridiculously good-looking have any bearing on your decision, Instructor?"

"No, although your modesty may help," she replied sarcastically, burying her smile in the palm of the hand she slipped up over it, her shoulders going spring-coiled tight with the effort of holding back her laughter. "You'll always be the most aggravating presence in my life, won't you, Seifer?"

"I wouldn't want anyone else to take that place in your heart, Trepe," Seifer told her sincerely, gathering his long legs up underneath him. "You started wearing your hair up again," he observed, brushing off his pants as he stood.

"Yes," she said coolly, not looking at him. "Someone told me I was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, scar or no scar. At first, I thought he was utterly insane, and then I decided, for once, to trust him."

Seifer squatted down in front of her, his thumb coming up in a slow soft curve that encompassed the entire ragged circle of that burn scar, jagged as the ridges of his forehead disfigurement. The smile she gave him slammed something like a gut kick all the way through to his fucking spine, and he felt a mirror image response of that smile grab hold of his own lips.

It would not let go even when he tried to make it.

He gave up trying; fucker wasn't budging an inch. "Should listen to him more often. He sounds like he knows what he's talking about."

"Not often. But occasionally, I find that he makes some sense."

"Tch." He clamped his hands down over her forearms and pulled her up with him, their faces a scant inch apart in the pre-dawn glow of those creeping fires, and when she turned to face that billowing red ocean and its erosion of cityscape making its slow steady way toward them, Seifer let her go, dropping his hands and fisting them inside the pockets of his trench coat.

He still didn't understand how he'd become such a fucking pussy. Used to be, the silence draping them was a bitter stalemate between old enemies, picking scabs silently in the dark when the other forgot to pay attention. Nails-on-chalkboard shrill somehow, like his mother's fucking nails in his shoulders, his blood thundering in his ears and pounding in his dick and his eyes as tightly fucking shut as he could get them, like that would somehow blot everything out. Like his mother was some bad fucking dream, childhood imagining that he could make go away if he just wished hard enough, long enough.

He'd been a stupid fucking boy after all and not a man, hiding in the open with his eyes closed because he had somehow convinced himself that if he couldn't see the monsters, then sure as fuck they couldn't find him either. It hadn't taken him long to understand this was all a bunch of bullshit children made up to feel better about the thing crouching inside their closet waiting for that final sliver of nightlight to wink out and die, infantile fancy that just hurt him worse when he found out it wasn't true.

The thing in Seifer Almasy's closet was his mother. And she'd been there night or day, rain or fucking shine.

At least that childhood closet monster waited for the shadows to come out.

Her hand where it rested on the railing looked very small and very frail, just a woman's hand and not a soldier's now, and in that silence that had become a stretch of quiet companionship between them, he reached out to slide his own over it.

They watched the sun go down together, a smear of bloodglow on the far horizon that blended seamlessly into Esthar City underneath it.

* * *

><p>Ranru<p>

Centra

3 Weeks Later

Flat blank glass of ocean surface still as pond water, jabbing her eyes with needle pricks of sun glare-

Wet-slap wriggle of net-tangled trout, flopping back and forth and back and forth on the deck beneath her feet-

And the little flutter of expanding life inside her belly, thrusting nudges of soft kick up against the green rayon of her T-shirt, a throb of distant second heartbeat inside Rinoa Heartilly that brought just a hint of a smile to her lips.

She wished Squall were here to meet their child.

Raijin, his entire titanic frame somehow squished into a small lawn chair on the dock beside her, gave a sharp tug on his line, coming half out of his chair enthusiastically enough to overturn it, its landing a loud clatter on the wave-chewed fray of wooden boards under her bare feet. Rinoa watched him bring in another fish with a smile, his triumphant yell turning into something more sheepish as he slipped the hook from the beached pant of his catch's gills and lost his grip on it. It flopped back into the water with a nimble twist that took it out and over the dock in a flash of silver that burned her eyes like mid-noon sun afterimage, and she folded her hands across the swelling paunch of her belly.

"Damn. I was just gonna' make a comment about how bad Seifer used to be at this, too, ya' know? Guess I can't talk now." He righted his chair and settled himself back into it, reaching for the open tackle box at his feet.

"He can't be any worse than me." Rinoa sighed, giving her line in the water a listless little flick.

Raijin smiled, straightening from the tackle box with a chunk of bright green in one hand that he began to mold onto the end of his hook. "Nah. Seifer was always real impatient, ya' know? He'd have his line in the water three minutes, then get pissed that nothing was biting ya' know. Kinda' miss having him around sometimes. Fu an' me ya' know-we're happy, real happy, but it's not the same sometimes without the whole posse together. Seifer gave us our purpose, ya' know."

She cupped her chin in one hand. "Seifer wants people to think he's a lot meaner than he really is, doesn't he? I used to think that all the time during the summer we spent together. It was like he wanted everyone to see him as this big meanie because he thought it made him tough. But I always used to think that deep down, there was a lot of good in him."

Raijin sent his line back into the water with a practiced flick of his wrist. "Yeah, ya' know. Seifer puts on a good face, but he's real soft on the inside in some ways, ya' know? Used to look up to him a lot." He paid the line out with a frown. "What's with him and Instructor Trepe, ya' know? When they brought you down here it seemed like there might be something there, ya' know? For Seifer, at least. He had his feelings written all over his face ya' know."

Rinoa brought her knees up to her chest. "I don't know. I started to notice stuff too during the trip down; they fought a lot, but Seifer would look at Quisty when she didn't notice, and…" She wrinkled up her nose, trying to put into words what she had seen on his face in those unguarded moments when it became clear Quistis Trepe was somehow the only thing he could see anymore. "…his whole face changes, you know? I'm not sure how to explain it. There's just something different about it. It kinda' reminds me of the way he used to look sometimes during that summer we were together, but he didn't look at me like _that_."

Raijin was smiling, his face lit up in the mid-morning glow of the sun off the water. "Think Seifer's finally in love with someone who's not him, ya' know."

Rinoa hugged both knees up against the subtle bump of Squall's child, sliding her cheek down to rest it against them. "Yeah, but I'm not sure Quisty feels the same way."

"Ah, she'll come around, ya' know. When she gets to know Seifer. He's got a lot of good in him. Instructor Trepe'll see that eventually, ya' know. And Seifer could always get me an' Fu to do pretty much anything. He'll win Instructor Trepe over eventually, ya' know."

"I hope so." She gave her line another twitch, sighing into her knees. "I just want them both to be happy. There's been too much sadness already, you know? And Seifer got hurt worse than any of us during the war, didn't he?"

Raijin's brow furrowed. "Seifer didn't have a whole lot of contact with Fu an' me after the war, ya' know? Just kind of drifted away from us and it didn't seem like there was anything we could really do about it. Always felt like he had a lot of guilt in him over what he did to us, what Fu an' me got dragged through, ya' know. He'd never say it, but Seifer's got a lot of issues to work through, ya' know. I hope Instructor Trepe can help him with that." He jiggled his line with another frown, curving one giant hand down over his right thigh, the fingers going frustration tight as his forehead screwed itself up into a fault line of wrinkles. "Damn, ya' know. I'm out of the orange bait, and that's what they were biting on, ya' know. I'm gonna' head back to the house for just a couple of minutes. You can just stay here, ya' know. Be back in five minutes."

"Ok." Rinoa lifted her head from both knees as he levered himself out of his chair with a grunt, her eyes going to the palm-sized square of intermittently blinking electronic face he left behind, his clomping footsteps disappearing down the dock as she kept staring at it.

He was well out of sight when she finally made the decision to reach for his phone, flipping it open with a flick of her thumb and a guilty check over one shoulder toward the serpentine path winding its switchback way toward the sagging little house she had taken up residence in for the past two months. She navigated her way to his contacts list with one eye on that intermittently blinking face and the other on the path he might return down any moment, and when she located Seifer's number among a scattering of other contacts whose names she did not recognize, Rinoa selected the call option before she could change her mind.

The voice that came on after a torturous stretch of three rings rode the connection on a burst of static, slurred with what sounded like sleep. "Raij? The fuck are you doing calling at this time?"

"Oopsie!" Rinoa said brightly, bringing her feet down with a loudly echoing _thump _on the dock underneath her. "Sorry. Forgot about the time difference. Did I wake you up?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end. "Rinoa?"

"Yep! Sorry to call you, but you're the only number Raijin's got in his phone that I recognize. I was wondering…can I talk to Squall?"

"You're not supposed to be calling."

"I know. But I miss him, and I figured a teeny, weeny little five second conversation won't hurt anyone, right?"

What was either a sigh or another burst of static hissed loudly in her ear. "I'm in Esthar. Leonhart's not here; he's back at Garden."

She let disappointment sag her shoulders under its thousand pound deadweight, immovable load that she suddenly felt in every line of pregnancy-stiff sinew and sputter of nerve endings that had gone electric short-out feeble with the sudden extinguishment of her hope. She tried not to let that disappointment leak into her voice, making it into something as sunny and bright and shadowless as the water in front of her, stirring her line through a current-ripple that became a concentric flare. "Oh. Ok! Well, how are you doing, Seifer?"

Another pause made her wince, just slightly. Seifer Almasy's temper was relatively legendary all on its own; Seifer Almasy's temper upon being jarred unexpectedly from sleep could put a hibernation-disturbed Ruby Dragon to shame.

"I was doing just great until my phone started ringing at 3:00 in the fucking morning," he snapped.

"Right! Sorrreeee," she apologized, drawing the word out the way she used to, in that not-quite-child's voice he had found almost endearing, once upon a time ago.

A long, long time ago, another Rinoa and another Seifer that were now just ghostly afterimages of half-memories she sometimes could barely remember lay side by side in that frilly infantile room she had never considered quite hers, not when it was a part of _his _house, and that other Rinoa and that stranger Seifer gave themselves over to the clumsily careful explorations of children verging on adulthood. She had not been his first; she had been made well aware of that fact by the way women were drawn to him like insects enticed to split second calderas of death inside sizzling porch-hung zappers, but she liked to think she was the first that had mattered to him. She liked to think, as did most of the women who had fallen for Seifer Almasy, that it was her gentle loving heart that had been the first to soften Garden's most notorious bad boy. That perhaps, she had cracked his shell just enough to let inside something important, something all-consuming like what she had unexpectedly discovered with Squall Leonhart.

"Whatever." His sigh became a hiss between his teeth, and Rinoa smiled despite herself.

"Now you sound like Squall." she teased.

There was a soft click, and then the line went dead in her hands. She stared down at it for a moment, into that sporadic electronic flash painting striations of blue across her face, and then she smiled again, softly.

* * *

><p>Seifer rolled over to set his phone down on the nightstand beside his bed, trying to rub coherence back into his eyes.<p>

Something beside him gave a twitch that made him jump, and with a muttered expletive he knocked the phone off that bedside table and onto the floor, his heart pounding as he came into a rigid-spined sit that made him think of his mother's visits-

Smiling red lips and hands and arc of headdress behind her kindly mother's face, waiting for him in the dark-

Fingers like slithers of maggot crawl down his chest and stomach and lower still, and boy Seifer in the dark with his eyes tightly closed and his mother's hand in his pants-

It was Quistis in the bed beside him. Not his mother and not those fucking shadows that made him picture Matron's throat gaping an open lipless smile at him, that made him want to make this fish gill flap into a reality, into something tangible he could feel spurting underneath his fingertips and pounding in his dick, because he was so fucking sick, he was so goddamned _twisted_-

Thinking about killing her gave him a fucking hard-on like he couldn't believe. She had bent him into this ugly hunchbacked creature that lurked just under the pretty surface that was Seifer Almasy, egotistically-tended physique and shining blonde hair and green eyes like sea-polished bottle glass-

She'd fucking bent and warped and torqued him into that laughing smiling asshole on her parade float waiting for these Liberi Fatali to come to him-

But she had to have started off with something. There'd been a seed there all the way back to when he was boy Seifer dreaming on a beach beside his mother's house; she'd just watered it.

He'd planted it himself.

He slid down underneath the covers beside her, studying the back of her head. For a moment, he couldn't even remember how she'd ended up here. Quistis Trepe-Instructor Trepe-she'd always been too good for him. Hadn't her eyes always told him that, when they skipped right on by her problem student to that bland-faced asshole sitting just a few desks over? The one quietly ignoring her entire fucking existence, like he didn't give a shit that once upon a time ago this had been blue-eyed little Quisty making sand castles on the beach, bossy waist-high Quistis Trepe fending off his stick sword with one of her books, and then shrieking when it got ruined-

Maybe you could prefer daddy's rebellious little princess to that-fuck him if he would ever understand why, though-but you couldn't _ignore _it. You couldn't pretend Quistis Trepe and her miles-long model's legs and stern teacher's lip press didn't exist, even when you wanted to.

She shifted again, the bed creaking underneath her. "I-fell asleep?" she murmured softly, one hand coming up to chafe sleep from her eyes, and from beneath that tumbled pile of sleep-tousled blonde, he saw one blue eye slit uncertainly. "What time is it?"

Seifer rolled her back over onto her side, pulling her up against his chest. "Go back to sleep."

Quistis sighed. "No; I shouldn't have fallen asleep. I was working on something for Ellone." She propped herself awkwardly up on one elbow, trying to disentangle herself from his arms.

"Yeah, about five hours ago. Found you asleep in the library at one of the computers."

She rolled over to squint at him, rubbing her eyes again. "Did you carry me back here?"

"Yeah. And you're not as fucking light as you look, Instructor, you know that?"

"Why didn't you take me back to my own room?"

He pasted an innocent look she had never fallen for across his face. "Couldn't remember where it was, so I thought I'd be a gentleman and share."

Quistis rolled her eyes. "You can recite every prominent gunbladist in history, their birthplace, where they trained, a brief synopsis of their entire life and age at time of death, but you can't recall a room you've been to numerous times within the past month?"

He shrugged. "Weird, huh, Trepe?"

She shook her head, peeling the covers off her and swinging both legs over the side of the bed.

"Come on. It's 3:00 in the fucking morning. Ellone's asleep too. Whatever you were doing for her can wait, don't you think?"

Quistis frowned. "Yes, but I don't need to impose on you all night."

Seifer snorted very loudly. "Yeah; it's real fucking horrible, sleeping next to a hot chick. The only problem I have is that all your clothes are on." He grabbed her by the arm as she rolled her eyes again and began to stand up, yanking her back down beside him before she could fully straighten. The startled yelp that escaped before she could stop it made him laugh, and he slammed his hands down to either side of her head with enough force to make the bed jump underneath them. "What do you need to get back to your room for, Instructor? To take that shower you missed? Wash the drool off the side of your face?" He flicked a finger playfully at the side of her cheek, smirking. "You're welcome to do that here. Just leave the door open." He lightly kissed the hollow of her throat.

"You're-"

"A pig?" he interrupted. "It comes with the y chromosome. Turns everyone with one into a raging sex-crazed asshole for most of their lives." He slid his fingers up under her shirt, very softly grazing the undersides of both breasts, and the soft breath she hissed in between her teeth arched that warm lithe body up against his.

The blood in his ears became a tidal roar, drowning out everything else. In that soft-scented darkness that smelled like his old instructor but stared up at him with his mother's eyes, cold and predatory and demanding all of him, his whole motherfucking soul and every insignificant little sliver of him that was still her child on that beach thinking about the stories she read him-

He couldn't fucking _breathe_-

He pulled away with a short sharp jerk like his breath between his teeth, and as he wrenched himself away from her panting and shaking and trying not to vomit, Quistis sat up with him, one hand going to his cheek.

"Seifer," she said his name very softly, like his mother before she became his rapist.

He shut his eyes and let his face fall forward against her neck as she fumbled at the top button of his pants, and those were his mother's hands now, undressing him in the dark, quieting him when he begged her to stop, when he just wanted her to fucking _go away_ and she mounted him anyway, riding him until that black lightless eternity behind his squeezed-tight lids showed him gushing neck stump, trickling red down his blade and its pig squeal protest of steel-on-bone resistance. Until his dick went rigid and his hands against her hips bruising tight, until he started to thrust back, waiting for that scream that was not her orgasm cry in the dark but that low thunder roll of motherfucking _pain _beating tiny fucking fists across his whole goddamned chest-

Quistis slid both hands to his cheeks, and tilted his face back from that warm soft hollow he needed to disappear in, if he was going to survive this. "Seifer, open your eyes."

He did so, very reluctantly, and there she was smiling at him with her lips but not her eyes-not the way his mother used to, like that pasted-on mouth curl was just her one feeble attempt at showing him her human side, but because there was nothing in that gentle little lip quirk that could break through the grief in those blue eyes he went to sleep thinking about. "Quistis-"

She brushed hair from his forehead scar. "Keep your eyes open. So you know it's just me. I'm not going to hurt you, Seifer."

Hadn't his mother fucking said that too? Hadn't she goddamned _promised _him that together they were going to pull down the whole fucking world, and there'd been no goddamned clause in there about pulling him right down with it, there'd been no fucking _warning _that when she picked apart the fraying threads of this world she wanted to fracture, she was going to unravel him right the fuck along with it all.

"Are you all right?"

He had to clear his throat before he could speak. "Yeah."

She slid his zipper shyly down, and he kept his eyes open for all of it, with those shadows on the wall at her back mocking him, twisting and wisping into caricatures of her face that showed him red whore's lips locked open around points of needle teeth, because he'd always fucking hated needles with a passion, and she had known that, she had fucking _known _that, and she'd-

Quistis stopped and kissed him.

It sent a jolt all the way from his mouth down to his fucking toes.

"Seifer, if you need me to stop-"

"No." he said roughly against her neck, breathing that light foodish scent that was caramel or vanilla or some shit like that and kissing the pale fragile arch of throat column his mother had tried to make him break, once.

"I just…I would like for you to have something to remember. That's not her."

He let her undress him in the dark like his mother used to.

_-shhh seifer my brave little boy be a good boy you don't want to upset mommy do you seifer you're a good brave boy aren't you-_

Those fucking shadows on the walls, twirling twirling twirling, playacting dramas that showed him Hyperion sliding through that nub of vertebrae right at the nape of that pretty little neck, the lips of his mother's severed fucking head still fastened around his dick-

And every fucking time he started to slide off into that abyss, into that shadowy underlayer of world that was here and yet not quite present, she brought him back, pulled him up, and when the last layer between them was a crumpled pile beside the bed, he flipped Quistis onto her back and pinned both wrists.

She locked her legs around his back.

He pushed into her slowly; she went rigid around him, her hands becoming fists against his shoulders, and he let his breath shudder out between his lips and stopped. "Does it hurt?" His voice was a hoarse rasp of a whisper, because it had been two long fucking years of nothing but his hand for company, and it was all he could do to not fuck her brains out on these twisted knots of sheets underneath them that she was probably bleeding onto.

"A little." Her voice had taken on that strained quality it always used to get when she addressed him in class, but she smiled anyway, and relaxed her clench on the snarled muscles of his shoulders. "Keep going. I'll be all right."

He kissed across one breast to the cleft between them, and from there up her throat to her chin, sinking in another excruciating inch. Quistis brought her hips carefully up to meet his, once and then again, and Seifer pulled cords of sheet into figure eight twists around his palms, hissing another little breath against her neck. "Instructor, you're going to have to be careful there if you want this to last longer than three minutes. It's been two years, remember?" He brought his lips down over her left nipple, and the gasp it pulled between her teeth made him thrust in a little harder than he'd meant to. "Fuck," he whispered, letting one hand untangle itself from those figure eights to brush a long slow curve across her cheek and up into her hair. "You ok?"

"I'm a rank A SeeD with a body count just as high as your own," she said as dryly as she could manage through those winded runner pants she was breathing in. "I am not made of glass, Seifer."

He gave another short, hard thrust, levering her up by the hair to kiss her. "Is that a hint to just fuck you?"

Quistis smiled at him.

For just a moment it was his mother smiling back at him in the dark, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

She touched his face lightly as a reminder, and he leaned down to kiss her as he began to thrust again, carefully at first until she started to match his rhythm, until those winded runner pants became a low moan in the back of her throat that reminded him, for a second, of his mother.

He hammered back his mother's twisted shadow and the tips of her hair brushing his chest with images of this woman underneath him that he wielded like swings of mallet-perfectly-placed glasses and shyly uncertain smile, out of place on her poised Instructor's face, and gentle lips that did not hide hints of teeth the way his mother's used to.

Quistis slid her hands down to his hips, and yanked them down against hers, burying him to the hilt; he hid his face in her neck as he came, and this was it, this was fucking _it_-his mother staring horrified down at him in the dark because that bitch had given Matron her mind back, in the infinitesimal moment between a man and woman that cannot be stopped or taken back, his dick emptying itself inside his mother as she gaped at him like he was the rapist and she his victim-

"Seifer-" Her fingers curled into the hair at the nape of his neck, becoming hard little knots that pulled his face up and forced him to look at her.

And there was Quistis Trepe's eyes and hands and lips waiting for him and not his mother's, Quistis Trepe with the soft knowing smile and the dainty little fingers that could crush a man's sack or throat or ego in a flat half second-

Quistis Trepe, who for some reason he would never understand, was letting filthy fucking Seifer Almasy screw her. Who was _smiling _at him as he did it, was looking up at him like he was not repulsive or broken or the twisted stunted knight his mother had left behind on that road that was supposed to take him to his dream-

In Quistis Trepe's eyes, he looked like just another man.

He heard her suck in a breath, and then she started to spasm around him, just a small little internal twitch that was over in a second or two, but it was enough to leave rake marks of red down his back and onto the top half of his ass cheeks.

* * *

><p>In the dark he always used to lie alone in, afterward, he drapes his arm across her waist and listens to her breathing go back to smooth unbroken regularity.<p>

"So, you love me yet, Instructor? Most women do, after sleeping with me." There is a smirk in his voice, but it is there to hide his fear, because he is asking this jokingly, in the tone he used to tease her from the back of her classroom-

But he needs to fucking know so badly, it's burning a hole through his fucking stomach. It's taking everything inside Seifer Almasy, good and bad and horrible and brilliant, and it's twisting them all up into this fucking rat's nest that is sitting inside his guts right now, heavy as a boulder.

He charges smiling into battle like one misplaced swing of Hyperion will not be the end of him, like a single lapse in a hand or elbow or foot placement will not kill him, and yet-

Lying here in this darkness that does not look like his mother anymore, in this shadowless safe haven she has created for him, he is terrified. Waiting for her answer is a fucking boot on his testicles, three inches of compression shy of crushing them completely, but he can't tell her this, because he has already laid himself open, pinned his heart on his fucking sleeve like he used to promise himself he'd never do-

And it's her fucking turn now, you know? He just wants to hear it once, for just a second, a moment-whatever she wants to give him, but he fucking _needs _it-

He trails one hand over her hip like this is the only thing he's paying attention to right now.

Her tone is the same as his, and it doesn't give him what he is curled there at her fucking back praying for. "They obviously didn't know you as well as I did."

He rolls over onto his back like he's satisfied with this banter and has decided to go quietly to sleep, and for a long, long time he stares wide-eyed at the ceiling, wondering when the shadows will come back.

* * *

><p>Orphanage<p>

Centra

He begins this new life he has chosen carefully, like it is a porcelain figurine and he a clumsy fist around it.

He begins it, by thinking about his wife.

Not that woman with her cold-winter eyes that was all that was left of his Edea and the children's Matron, but the softly beautiful woman he had asked to be his wife so very long ago, the one he never dreamed would say yes. This woman who baked cookies for their children, and wiped smears of finger-shaped chocolate streak from his ties.

This woman he misses, so very, very much, digging in her garden with a smile on her face and a little green-eyed blonde at her feet, and this beach and these echoes of gull cry that remind him of his children's voices, some days-

They all bring him back to her, smiling down at him as he kneels with his heart in his throat and her pretty little fingers in his hand.

He shuffles around this sagging untended house that used to smell like her, and he stares out these windows that used to be washed and polished and shining, but are now just dust-caked squares like angled rotting teeth-

And he tries to remember everything. He thinks of his children before they were soldiers, and his wife before she became that woman with the cold-winter eyes and the hands like ice, when they bothered to touch him at all, and he stands on this beach with its haunting fragmentary echoes of the little girl who is buried underneath it now-

There is something inside his chest, jagged as a bone shard.

It is the pain his son was right about, the grief he could not confront because he was too old and haggard and worn-down to make himself face anything he did not want to see, and he tries to probe it now.

It does not want to be probed, and his eyes blur with tears.

He just wants his wife and his children and this seaside cottage that sounds like their laughter. It's not too much to ask, is it?

Very carefully, he takes off his glasses and wipes his eyes.

There is a car in the driveway, coming toward him with little pops of gravel that remind him of gunshots, of blown-open calderas of wetly gleaming chest cavity and she is so very pale, lying there in that coffin painted like a doll-

Irvine's hat is in his hand, but he is not crying. His face has become stiff-frozen mannequin, and Cid is very frightened nothing will ever move it again.

The passenger-side door of this car that is coming toward him swings open, and he makes himself smile, he makes himself remember the father he used to be, before his children fell from this nest he crafted for them to break their wings on the ground far below.

He stoops toward this wide-eyed child who looks at him like Cid Kramer is his last hope, his only chance, and he sets one shaking arthritic hand down on this head that is dusty faded bronze and not blonde-

"Hello, there; what's your name, young man?"

_-seifer almasy my name's seifer I'm five-_

This time, he's going to do it right.

* * *

><p><em>-they're going to kill you little stupid bitch why can't you see this iuguolo lemma vel intereo prissy little whore burn the children the liberi fatali BURN THE CHILDREN-<em>

She sat up in her dark silent room, panting.

Squall's child beneath her nightgown stirred, nudging her swollen aching belly skin with a hit like a freight train, and she jerked beneath her covers.

There was laughter in her ears.

_-he's trying to get out don't you understand he doesn't want to be in there he's SMARTER than you are he knows it's time to burn the children BURN THE CHILDREN bardus meretricis-_

She cringed back against the headboard that left imprints of crenellated design like brands across her shoulders, and she waited for the voice to go away.

At night, it always took longer.

She wished he was here to hold her hand.

* * *

><p>Presidential Palace<p>

Esthar

Quistis stared out polycarbonate-reinforced window pane with her chin in one hand.

Far below in the streets gone midnight black beneath torrential downpour, soldiers patrolled closed-off alleyways and junctions of road corner that were now blocked to all public traffic. Here in the top floor library she could only sort of make them out, little scurrying ants carrying out activities she could only absently guess at, and she turned back to her computer with a vague pang of sympathy, rubbing at the headache that had begun to pound its clenched fist against her temple.

She was trying not to think about Seifer more than she was getting any real work done. In the week since they'd slept together, she had hardly even seen him. At first it had not disturbed her all that much-Laguna's overwhelmed security force had finally begun to use the SeeDs for which Esthar was paying good money, and their days became blurs of quiet back alleyway patrols and strategy sessions with ex-military heads of security that consumed days and halves of sleepless nights. He'd been just a fleeting presence along the edge of her life, and she had let the faint ache this absence left behind percolate underneath her skin, pacifying it with the assurance that in just a few nights, they would both, together, be free of their duties and then, of course-_of course_-

They could be together. She could spend another night in those arms, problem student Seifer Almasy with his feet up on his desk and his I-can-see-right-through-that-skirt smirk, Matron's pretty laughing slave boy whose arms she had never even, in her wildest fantasies, imagined she would spend all her time thinking about.

And he had disappeared to play cards with Zell. He had needed time to clean and hone his gunblade. So sorry, Instructor, but he'd already made plans with the cowboy. Endless reams of excuses, of reasons why he did not have even a moment to spare for her, and glaring into the blank black void of her computer's screensaver, Quistis tried to decide just what his sudden standoff smile and nonchalant half-shrug of dismissal all implied.

Perhaps she'd been terrible. Perhaps sleeping with her had called to mind every single conquest Seifer Almasy had ever notched into his bedpost, and Quistis Trepe, shyly inexperienced Instructor number 14, had far paled in comparison to all of them.

That gaping abscess-maw of bitter lonely grief spread from her stomach into her chest, and she felt it swallow her heart.

She felt it take everything, until there was nothing left of Quistis Trepe but hollow skeletal framework like the man who used to be her father, overseeing the dying kingdom that was his beach, echoing with the distant thunder feedback of his children's laughter.

She tapped her fingers in a tiny muffled drum roll against the desk underneath them.

_-her new mother is in the kitchen boiling water but she does not smile or sing or laugh the way Matron used to and this tiny beating star of pulse point in her palm picks up like a flutter of bird wing when she hears her new father step through the front door yelling-_

Quistis rubbed her temples again.

_-child Quistis alone in a strange kitchen with her hands in knots and her stomach in loops and her eyes blinking blinking blinking so they cannot see the tears before she makes them go away-_

It was just-

He'd said he loved her. And maybe she hadn't been ready to hear it, maybe it had frightened her, it had _terrified _her, this declaration from this man who might burn her like stalled-spell conflagration in her veins-

But child Quistis inside of her, innocent little Quisty who was not a soldier or killer or burier of friends who died too young-this Quistis needed acknowledgement that was not the blind hero worship of a fan club who did not and did not want to know the ugly stunted woman beneath the kind fix-it smiles. This woman killed with cold-steel eyes like Matron's beside the smiling blonde-haired knight who had been a small laughing boy on her beach, once upon a very long time ago. This woman sent students she had protected and nurtured and cared for to die in blood and bowels and semi-second eye rolls of accusatory glares that became flat blank glass, forever.

This woman-

This woman the coward, who could not admit she might love that long ago laughing boy on that long ago beach, because he might hurt her. Because he might die, and leave her all alone again like Irvine standing over a pretty shellacked coffin dripping rainwater like tears.

He had done it for her. Seifer Almasy, beautiful, reckless, arrogant Seifer Almasy with his whole heart in his eyes, and lying beside him in the dark, letting that casual question with the faint underlayer of tremor beneath it roll over her-

She had not been able to say anything, for a long time. She had wanted to tell him something profound, to touch his cheek with that faint fray of new beard stubble coming in, and let him know his mother's tainted twisted love was not the only thing he had left to cling to, the only hint of caring he could ever hope to glean from another human being-

And yet she had not.

She had smiled very sadly in the dark, and given him something flippant, something that was not at all what he wanted or needed, but couldn't he _understand_? If she named this thing between them, this budding _something_ she knew what to call but did not want to, it would make it tangible. It would make it _real_, like the looming destructive something between Squall and Rinoa, and between Irvine and Selphie.

She could not stare down at him in a pretty shellacked coffin in his pretty shellacked cadaver makeup, and figure out how to go on. It was a terribly childish notion, but if she just said nothing, if she just pretended-if she could just _make herself believe_-there was nothing but a lonely woman and a lonely man, seeking comfort in the dark-

Then when the open spurting caldera of his chest splashed like Selphie's beneath her hand, she could survive. She would not freeze or crumble or scream, like Squall if it were Rinoa's open spurting caldera of chest wound underneath him, and she would not seal herself off from her friends and family and duty, the way Irvine had.

She would live. Not happily-ever-after, perhaps not even happily-but she would live. She would go on to cross her t's and dot her i's and pen neat lines of instructor's signature across bottoms of test sheets and permission slips and leave requests, and then one day, it would be her open spurting caldera of chest wound beneath someone else's hands.

And she would not have to pretend she did not hurt anymore. She would not have to watch her students attend their field exams with a smile on her face and a fist in her chest, and she would not have to watch Squall or Irvine or Zell-Seifer or Ellone or Cid, become fresh humps of grave mound across that beach beside a childhood cottage by the sea.

The door at her back open and shut, quietly.

Quistis nudged the mouse just slightly, and in the sudden revealing glare of her computer, she could see Ellone tucking hair behind both ears.

The older woman sat down with a sigh beside her. "Any luck tracing the accounts?"

Quistis gave her a smile that stretched thin like a wire at its breaking point, self-deprecatingly regretful. "I'm sorry. I have a very rudimentary grasp of hacking. It was Selphie who always excelled in that particular area," she replied softly.

Ellone sighed again, and Quistis noticed with a frown the smudges of purple underneath hollow sunken eyes, the same sight that stared her back in the mirror each morning. "Not sleeping well?"

"Who is?" Ellone let her chin come down to rest in her hand. "You-" Something like a tiny hitch of hesitation entered her voice, and Quistis subtly raised an eyebrow. "You don't know where Zell is right now, do you?"

"On patrol, I believe. With Seifer."

Ellone smiled at mention of his name. "How is everything between the two of you?"

Quistis pasted something on her lips she only hoped didn't crack around the edges, feathering toward a cardhouse tumble of falling despondent face that would give her away in an instant. "Seifer and I are…fine. We've decided-" They had not decided anything. They had barely even spoken, since that early morning teardown of the armor they each carefully and painstakingly donned every day, and she stopped without finishing the sentence.

She had nothing to say.

Ellone clicked her tongue. "Is Seifer being stubborn? He hasn't changed much since he was a little kid. There's still a lot of boy in the man, isn't there?" She glanced down at a fray of hang nail for a moment, picking idly at it. "But, you know, I think that's a good thing. He used to pick on you all horribly, but there was a really sweet, gentle part of him he tried to hide that used to come out sometimes, when he thought no one was looking." She smiled softly. "I always hoped he wouldn't lose that. And I don't think he did, even after everything that happened to him."

No, Quistis thought, studying her hands, seeing in them images of Seifer's arms coming up through that slow wide curve of embrace he let her sink, bawling, into. He had not. She had just never bothered to notice it, before, and now, now that she had, now when she did not _want _to-

It might be too late. Perhaps she'd waited too long, held him out at arms length for the last time. Seifer had never been very good at hiding in the shadows, waiting for someone to pay attention to him, after all.

She glanced out through that far side window again, down upon those tiny scurrying ant dots of men and women caught midway between open bleeding sky and gathering lakes of block-length flooding, and then she turned back to her computer.

She made herself not think about him again.

* * *

><p>The skies had spent the last two hours pissing on his head in this stupid stinking alleyway, and Zell was <em>cold<em>. And hungry. And he just wanted to go inside, inside to fragrant heady warmth that smelled like her perfume, that took everything new inside of his chest and stomach and boulder-lodge of throat obstruction he sometimes got around her now-

He frowned and dropped into basic stance, light and bouncing on the balls of his feet, back hip slanted in a tilt that put him sideways.

Behind him on the closed lid of a dumpster that had not been emptied in some time, judging by the smell of it, sitting with Hyperion across his knees and the layers of his rain gear spread out around him like a cloak, Seifer cleared his throat. "Hold fucking still, Wuss. I feel like I'm going to have a seizure just watching you."

"Nah. You're too wound-up for that right now. Maybe a heart attack, though. What's amatter? You have a fight with Quisty or something?"

"Trepe and me are fine," Seifer grunted, pulling the hood of his rain gear up over his head, shadowing his distinctive scar and scowl.

"Yeah? That's funny, 'cause you seem to be avoiding her a lot. And, y'know, you get constipated face like nothing else every time someone brings up her name. Your face is going to get stuck like that, and then you'll look like Squall." He snickered. "So what's goin' on?"

"Give me a break," he snapped. "You want me to star in a fucking chick flick with you or something? Share my feelings? Why don't you just bend me over this fucking dumpster?"

"Look, Almasy, I'm sure Quisty'll put out eventually. I'm very pretty, I know, but I'm just not comfortable sharing that part of myself with you. I'm saving myself."

It was Seifer's turn to snicker. "Having every woman who's ever met you turn you down doesn't count as 'saving yourself.'"

"Screw you! I got lotsa' women who want a piece of this."

Beneath that arc of cowl those lips curled in a sneer Zell remembered from his childhood, a hint of predatory wolf's grin that made him shiver beneath his covers on nights he knew Almasy was still awake, watching him. For just a moment, all he could see through knife-slash blurs of rainfall that bounced off pavement and plastic-sheen folds of vinyl rain gear, was that bright blonde head beside their gentle loving Matron, bent underneath her will like fresh-hung corpse.

Like all of them, he supposed, that was still the Seifer he could sometimes see in the shadows that stalked and chased and circled one another on the ceiling above his head, shadow puppet playact showing him shivering rope braids of unraveled intestinal loops and lip-gape of pumping neck wound. Almasy wasn't even the damn wolf in sheep's clothing-he was just the damn wolf, never bothering to hide that predatory eye glint or teeth flash under the thin veneer of civilization most people at least tried to adopt, and Zell studied him subtly now, sitting there underneath mid-afternoon downpour hunched in on himself with that long moon-bright line of silver across his knees.

Casually violent.

Those were the words that convex hump of once upon a time slave boy beneath his borrowed jacket brought to mind. Hands sketched in healed throat-slit lines of age-pale injury and knurls of training-broken knuckle bone, strong enough to break a man. Eyes that would not blink or flicker or bat at the branch-broken crack of separating spinal column, peeling open in those hands.

And slender, pretty Quistis Trepe, wielding power like their mother over all of that, standing at the helm like the damn ship wasn't about to smash itself apart on surf-sharpened knobs of jetty.

Funny thing was, if anyone could steer the busted-up wreck that was Seifer Almasy back out into smooth waters, it was probably her. He'd never thought of that before, never even considered the possibility of steadfast capable Quisty, together with that arrogant bullying piece of shit he'd always hated with a passion, until a cramped prison cell filtering moonlight over shaking, sweating hands. But now…now, he could almost see it, could quite possibly picture it, if he tilted his head just right and squinted an eye. Quisty'd keep Almasy in line. Almasy'd break through an entire bristling front line, alone, just to reach her in time.

Yeah. He could see it. Child Quisty and short, stick-limbed Seifer, racing one another down a childhood beach, playing tag in the borderline of current-ripple eating their beach, one slow, flotsam-littered layer at a time. Seifer Almasy and Quistis Trepe, war-torn, world-weary sick-of-it-Hyne-damn-all like the rest of them, picking each other up in a world that kept kicking them over the way that stick-limbed boy destroyed sand castles.

He wanted that for them. Hell, he wanted it for them all, for Irvine nursing the splinters of his heart and Squall brooding alone behind mounds of paper avalanche that teetered on the swaying knife-edge of collapse, for Rinoa far away carrying his child and for-

For himself. For these new things inside his chest and stomach and throat, wriggling around inside his pores.

"This is boring as shit."

"What, you want another assault on the Palace or somethin'?"

Seifer shifted Hyperion across his knees. "You were just complaining a while back about how fucking bored you were, Wuss."

"Yeah, dude-_before _some creepy mofo stuck me in a tank in a room full of naked kids and carved a Hyne-damned number in my neck like he was tagging me for some weirdo perv science experiment. Maybe being bored's not so bad, huh?"

A little checkmark of a wrinkle appeared between Seifer's eyebrows. "Tch. Whatever. Maybe for Wusses."

"Fuck you, Almasy." He jabbed a couple short, sharp strikes that slapped raindrops stinging away, his feet shuffling noisily against the pavement. "So seriously, man, what's up with you an' Quisty? You pull a dick move? Bring her some flowers-I'll tell ya' which ones she likes. She'll forgive ya.'"

"Where the fuck would I get flowers?"

"From a _flower shop_, idiot."

"Yeah, sure, in a city that's busy putting down terrorist uprisings and hates B. Garden SeeDs, I'll just stroll right the fuck down to the nearest florist and see if they've got something a nice girl like a Rank A trained mercenary might want. Where's your fucking helmet, today, Wuss? Besides, I didn't fucking do anything."

"Shut up, asshole. And whataya' mean you didn't do anything? Did Quistis do something?"

Seifer showed his teeth in something that wasn't a smile. "Maybe things just aren't working out. Ever consider that a romance between two mercenaries with body counts rivaling the whole fucking Estharian army might not be anything like the ridiculous, fluffy fucking rainbow fart Pubes and the princess have going on? Maybe Trepe and I just aren't meant to be."

"Yeah, 'cept you'd masterbate with her whip if she told you that'd get her to pay any attention to you."

Almasy's whole face went red. "_Fuck _you."

"Hey, calm the hell down. Man, you're really wound up about somethin', huh? You know, I think Quisty probably likes you a lot-she's just sorta' shy about that sort of thing, y'know? She was really worried while you were in the hospital. Squall said she was freakin' out hardcore when she found you in that pervo's creepy-ass lab-well, I mean, he didn't put it exactly like that, but he said she was really upset and all. So whatever's eatin' ya'-go talk to her. It's not like we probably got a lotta' time on this planet, you know? Look at-" He had to swallow back the little hitch that broke his voice before he could continue. "Look at Selphie. And you know, Irvine knew that'd probably happen eventually-yeah, he wanted a nice long life with a porch swing and some grandkids for them eventually, but, I mean, none of us really expects to make it that long, you know? So you know what he did? He took advantage of every moment. And if he got in stupid little fights with Selphie-and they did that all the time-they always made up really quickly. 'Cause he figured, maybe that was the last time he'd get to see her, you know? Because either he'd go or she would, eventually, and probably sooner than later. So if you give a shit about her, go say you're sorry, you're an asshole, whatever you gotta' do, and spend as much time as you can with her. And if she's standoffish or kinda' cold or whatever-she's scared too, y'know. Quisty's never really been in a relationship, that I know of. So if you wanna' have something with her, you gotta' go slowly. And if you hurt her, I'll pull your dick off and make you eat it."

Seifer glared down at his hands, strained-white rigid across Hyperion. "Yeah, well, maybe you're fuckin' wrong. Maybe she doesn't give a rat's ass about me. Maybe she still wants Leonhart's little twizzle dick, for some who-the-fuck-knows reason."

"Tch. You're really stupid sometimes, you know that, man? Squall's her friend. She cares about him. But not like that. Wouldn't be any point, would there? He's got Rinoa; he doesn't even see anyone else."

The frown line drew itself back between Almasy's brows. "Trepe had a hard-on for him the whole time she was his instructor; he didn't look twice at her then, either, even with no Rinoa, and that didn't stop her. There's no fucking switch you can flip."

Zell snapped a backfist into another needle point of rain that stabbed the back of his hand with a little hornet sting of pain that irritated him just like this whole stupid, smelly alleyway and Almasy's blind stupidity. "_Quistis doesn't give a shit about Squall that way anymore_. Man, what else I gotta' say to get it through your head? Whatever happened between you two, just go talk to her. Right after we're off patrol duty, 'kay?"

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Whatever."

Zell relaxed out of his sparring stance and pointed an accusatory finger at his friend. "Don't argue with me, young man!" he thundered, then grinned. "That's what Ma always sounds like when she's really pissed at me."

"Tch. She should be pissed at herself for adopting you in the first place. I put that warning label on you before you left the lighthouse, didn't I?" He fit as many teeth as he could get into the grin he flashed Zell.

Zell scowled. "Yeah, asshole; Matron and I didn't notice that stupid thing until we made it all the way to Ma's. She laughed for like a half hour after she saw it."

Seifer shrugged. "Obviously Ma Dincht has a better sense of humor than Wuss Dincht. I'm not surprised; she'd have to, being forced to look at your face all those years."

"Har har," Zell snapped. "Why's Quisty like you again?"

Seifer smiled. "I'm strapped like a porn star on male enhancement drugs."

"Dude! I didn't need to know that, 'kay? Besides, I don't think Quisty cares about that sort of thing anyway. She kind of seems like the type that would keep all the lights off and cut a hole in the sheet, you know? Or else, a complete let-me-stomp-on-your-dick-while-I-strangle-you dominatrix."

Almasy's eyes became slits beneath his hood, shadowed ominously. "What the fuck are you doing imagining how Quistis has sex, Wuss?"

He disguised a laugh as a cough, carefully stifled by the sweep of sleeve that came up through a curve that terminated at his forehead, where he lingered for a second, wiping rainwater from his face. "Just remembering that one night Quisty and I had too much to drink and ended up back at her dorm room."

There was a heartbeat flicker of a pause, and then a snarled "_What_?"

"Yeah; one thing sorta' led to another, and then we...ya' know."

"Aren't you the world's oldest fucking virgin?" Seifer hissed, his fingers going sun-bleached pale on his gunblade. Zell could see the disfigured mounds of old breaks ripple and hump up beneath his knuckle skin, and he smothered another smile that might very well get him killed.

"Nah; that's just what _you _say. Quisty was my first, though. It was really nice, you know? I mean, good for you, Almasy. Not that you deserve her."

"I'm gonna' break your fucking _fac_-"

"Re_lax_, Almasy. I'm just kiddin' ya.' Quisty's kinda' like my sister, basically. I never slept with her. I don't think she's ever done that with anyone, unless you-eww, don't say anything, I don't want to know."

Those casually violent hands had gone back to a loose natural hold around Hyperion's handle, ready but not squeezing, and he watched the tense hunchback slump of Almasy's spine pull itself back upright one slow vertebral pop at a time. His neck cracked like a rifle shot and Zell returned to his shadow boxing, facing the mouth of the alleyway this time. "Hey, think I see our replacements. Should be about time to head out, anyway." He heard Seifer's boots hit the pavement with a storm-muffled smack he just barely noticed. "You gonna' go talk to Quisty?"

"Maybe," Seifer grunted.

"Do it," Zell insisted. "I'm serious. What if someone drops a bomb on this whole place tomorrow, huh? Then who's the stupid asshole who was too worried about his ego to spend his last day with the woman who makes his heart beat like a drumming beating drumbeat of a heartbeat?"

"What the fuck was that? Did you just try to be poetic?"

"Nah; that was something Rinoa wrote for Squall a long time ago. She started writing him these little love notes when they first started dating, right? And Kinneas an' I stumbled across 'em in Squall's desk one day and posted them all over the cafeteria; Rinoa thought it was sweet because then everyone knew how in love they were, but Squall put us on like three weeks of kitchen duty. It was worth it, though." He guffawed. "Shoulda' seen the look on his face." He clapped a hand down across the broad hard-muscled slope of Seifer's left shoulder as he stepped up beside him in that opening curve of the alleyway. "You're gonna' talk to her, right? Huh, huh?" Zell poked him in the side, eliciting another scowl.

"Get off me, you fucking idiot."

"I'm gonna' haunt ya' if you don't."

"At least that'll mean you're fucking dead."

"Oh, don't talk to me like that, you big thilly man!" Zell lisped. "Come here, you!" he squealed, getting a firm grip across Seifer's chin with thumb and forefinger and yanking his head sideways before the ex-knight could pull back in time, planting a wet, sloppy kiss across one cheek that earned him a snarled expletive and a cuff to the head he had to hastily duck, laughing.

"Fag."

"Douche."

"Fucking moron."

"Uh…_double _moron!"

"Fucking Hyne, Wuss; with language skills like that, I'm actually kind of fucking shocked Trepe didn't screw your brains out after all."

He jabbed Seifer sharply in the side with his elbow. "Yeah, yeah; shut up."

* * *

><p>Quistis opened the door to a very wet and disgruntled-looking Seifer Almasy, dripping water onto the carpet between them.<p>

She could only stand there for a moment, staring at him.

In the spray of chandelier lights that dripped yellow down across the wet-plastered brown of his hair, he shuffled both feet like an awkward, cringing teenager asking out his first date, and the low rumble of his throat clear became a wet hack against his damp palm.

"Are you all right?"

"It's pissing down rain out there," he said brusquely, glaring at everything that wasn't her.

"I guessed as much, from the small lake you are dripping all over the precise spot where I need to step anytime I want to leave my room."

His glare swung around to focus on her now, all the malice she remembered from the back of her classroom anytime she insisted on something unreasonable-such as actually finishing the assignment she had just passed out to him instead of disrupting the other students-concentrated in it. He leaned a hand against the frame of her door, gloved this time and just as soaked through as the rest of him, his broad shoulders filling the entire entryway.

"Can I help you with something?" Quistis asked politely.

Seifer rolled his eyes, craning his neck around so she could see just his profile, tight-lipped and strung wire-taut along the jaw line, the tendons in his throat jumping spastically. "Wuss said something that made sense. I'm still reeling."

Quistis smiled. "What did he say?"

"That I'm being an asshole."

Quistis dropped both arms to fold them across the chest of her lightweight sweater, trying to clear the frown from her brow. "That's not exactly a world-changing revelation, Seifer."

He swung his head back around to aim his scowl at her. "That I'm being an asshole because I'm fucking around playing cards and cleaning my fucking gunblade instead of spending any time with you when someone might drop a bomb on our heads tomorrow for all we know and kill us all," he amended. His feet shifted again, his hands coming together in a twist that popped all eight knuckles simultaneously, firecracker loud. She made her smile into a polite cough, flattening one hand across her mouth.

"Why have you been avoiding me?" Quistis asked carefully.

His scowl burrowed deeper. "Don't play fucking stupid, _Instructor_. You know why."

The three words he would say but she would not strained between them, electron-hum vibration that she could almost see strung out in lines like desert heat-ripple. Just a brief simplistic phrase, the same one thousands-millions-of women just like her uttered all the time, to a father mother lover, a brother or sister or friend, and yet-

Quistis Trepe could not recall ever having said it before. Certainly it had never been said to her, not since that long ago beach beside the thunder rumble of seascape that formed the childhood soundtrack she could still hear sometimes, in dreams that were not nightmare smears of gutted children dying alone on battlefields where she could not save them. Not until Seifer, selfish, impulsive Seifer pouring out his heart to her on that candlelit balcony, still speaking even when she could say nothing, even when all she could do, all she could handle, was to stand there with crescent moons of nail clench showing red across her palms.

She had not been a loved child. Matron and Cid cared for her because no one else would, because Edea Kramer's kind gentle heart could manage nothing else, and even they had not kept her.

They had sent her off to be one of those children, dying alone on a battlefield with no one to save her.

Quistis Trepe, Instructor number 14, understood death gurgles and cauterized-wound sighs and leather-crack whistles of fatal finishing strike; these were all the things that made sense to her, and this boy from that long ago beach, this man with his hand knotted in his hair and his shoulders braced for that fatal finishing strike she was so very good at-

He did not fit anywhere within these things that made sense to her, these death gurgles and wet-smacks of intestinal spillover she listened to each night, instead of sleeping.

Quistis stared up at him as his arms slumped down to dangle loosely along both sides, like he wasn't quite sure what to do with his hands.

He didn't know what to do with them, so she took them in her own and she stood smiling up at him, the faucet-drip of rainwater off his coat the only sound between them now. She still could not say what he wanted her to, was still not entirely certain she even _wanted _to voice this brief simplistic phrase so many hundreds-thousands-millions of people exclaimed all around her, every day-

But she could not stand hurting this boy with his stick sword and noble knight's dreams, still buried somewhere inside this damaged, patchwork man with the gradual reluctant smile that reached his eyes.

Quistis stood on her tip-toes to reach his lips.

His hands slipped free of hers, and closed around her waist.

Someday she would understand more than wet-smacks and death gurgles and leather-cracks of finishing strike, and eventually, slowly, she would stop being so very damn afraid that one day, one of these things might take him from her. One day, one of these things might take them all from her, the same way fate had used these things to take from Quistis Marae Trepe her middle-class parents and her middle-class life, and all the unassuming, middle-class things she might have been. A pretty carefree wife smiling in her porch swing, waiting for her husband to come home.

A proud expectant mother, cradling her one day son or daughter beneath flawless folded hands, not scarred or callused or whip-leather scented.

Someday, she wanted to tell him, because couldn't he just _understand_? Couldn't he just try and see that Quistis Trepe was not sure how to be loved or how to do it herself, that perhaps there was a reason Cid and Matron, her foster mother and her foster father-they had all sent her away as quickly as they could, as hastily as they could manage to be free of child Quisty with her books and glasses and endless curiosity-

Maybe they had known something that he did not. Maybe they had understood why she deserved to be a mercenary who watched her friends die, why she should have everything she tentatively loved taken from her, why she should know three different ways to kill a man with her bare hands before she had ever even kissed a boy.

Maybe it was Seifer who was all wrong, and Matron and Cid, her foster father and that polite-smiling foster mother who tried to pretend she didn't exist who understood Quistis Trepe's true worth.

One day, he might wake up beside her with a realization like dawning morning, and understand too.

One day he might leave her, because she didn't deserve anyone.

She wrapped her hands in the folds of his jacket, and let him brush hair from her eyes, let him cup her cheek and kiss her forehead and work his way back down to her lips, and she let herself believe, for a little while, that he would never come to this realization. That this stick-limbed boy with his duct-taped sword and his fantasies about knights and princesses and bravely-slain monsters, and this patchwork man whose mother had hurt him so very, very badly-

They would never leave her. And she would never be alone.

And she would live, happily ever after.

* * *

><p>The built-in alarm jangle of a soldier is just a subtle little rattle in the back of the head, muffled klaxon.<p>

It brought him upright out of a dead sleep anyway, panting air back into his lungs beside his calmly sleeping wife, his room around him a slumber-blur of shadows that clutched rifles, and sweeps of blade wearing pieces of fractured moonlight that came down to impale his wife beside him.

His room always looked like this, until he blinked a few times, until that sleep haze finally cleared from his eyes and he could see that those shadows and their sprays of rifle snout and moonlight-winking blade curves were just shadows after all. Sometimes he saw Seifer among them, his hair silvered old man gray in the moonlight and his knees and his head and his monumental will all bent to her, but tonight he was not there, tonight when the shadows stopped moving he did not disappear, because he had never been there in the first place.

Except they did not stop moving.

And Fuijin beside him-

She was bleeding.

Her breath hiccupped out between her lips in deflated-balloon hisses that scared him, that made him lean over her when he should have run, when he should have vaulted from their bed and kept going.

His fingers stumbled over the shredded meat that was her chest, cavern-gape that yawned wide enough for him to see her heart, each wet shivering pulse of its vibration twitching out a faltering rhythm slower than its predecessor.

Something inside the room hissed like his wife.

Everything began to ripple liquidly around him, that cavern-gape of ripped-open chest wall and deflated-balloon flutter of lips he'd been kissing, just a few hours ago, and he did not understand anything until the first nightmare face poked forward out of the shadows and the snout of its oxygen mask materialized like the realization that clicked jigsaw precise inside his mind.

Raijin leapt with a grace his lumbering body did not suggest, and caught that nightmare face with its oxygen mask snout and flickering surprise blink behind the view goggles upside the temple with his elbow.

He heard something crack like a gunshot.

He hoped the man suffered before he died-he hoped _all of them_, these shadows that were not shadows-he hoped they choked on the blood bubbles their impending deaths pushed up from their lungs and hearts and wet-flapping tatters of torn-out throats, the same way-the same _goddamned way_-his wife was doing now-

Something exploded; him or the world, he wasn't sure.

He crashed to his knees like a timber-cut log, and the floor underneath him jumped.

Something pulsed in his back, sharp and bright and never-ending as the pain inside his chest, the one that watched Fuijin slip farther and farther away from him even as the rest of him heaved back up to both feet, even as he lurched forward with both arms thrown bear-hug wide, even as they wrapped the man nearest him in a hold that broke his spine with a jagged ear-splitting splinter and threw him, rag doll limp, off to one side.

He picked up the next and the next after that, their guns thundering in his ears and their blades squealing past his ribs and their fist hammer blows driving him back down to both knees, and he screamed.

He shrieked out all his world-ending fury and grief in one shrill death cry that made them all, for just a moment, flinch back.

And he took the opening they gave him.

The final blow that brought him thundering down split his chin open on the floor with a crack like storm crash.

From this vantage point, he could see Fuijin's chest stutter into its last ascent, those crimson-painted lips going slack and still and silent, forever. One of the shadows beside her bumped his dead staring wife, and the head-flop this teetered her neck into rolled her face down to watch him die.

* * *

><p><em>-ring around the rosy pocket full of posies ashes ashes we all fall down we all fall down we all fall down rinoa pocket full of posies ashes we all fall down-<em>

She comes awake with one hand on her stomach, breathing hard in the dark.

_-ring around the rosy pocket full of posies ashes ashes we all fall down ashes ashes that's all that's left cinis cineris ut cinis cineris operor vos puto mihi ring around the rosy rinoa ring around the rosy-_

There is something watching her, not in this dark room with its shadow-slither of nightmare that is Squall wandering alone in their meadow trying to find her, but inside of her.

Maggot-burrowed inside her mind, setting down roots that wriggle like fingers and toes and chitonous click of insect antennae, feeling their way around inside of Rinoa Heartilly. She has seen this coming for a long time, has felt this thing that is slowly, one square torpid-creeping inch at a time, beginning to take over her, and she is trying so very hard to fight it-

But how do you fight yourself? How do you struggle against your own mind, this faulty damaged thing that has become an animal snare baited specifically for you? There is no weapon that can cut these shining chain links that have begun to form between your mind and this thing inside you, this swaying bridge that is slowly, one plank at a time, beginning to build itself, no swipe of pinwheel or flashburn of sorceress-enhanced spell that can cut or sever or damage it.

She hears their boots on the landing, and she knows they are coming for her.

_-you can kill them all rinoa just let me in just let me take control and your child is safe do you understand they'll take your _child _rinoa they'll take squall's precious little son and they'll rip his heart out-_

She can taste her panic and inside her their child is kicking, this tiny growing miracle who will one day have her eyes, or Squall's slow rare smile behind bangs he is always flicking out of the way, because she will not let him cut them.

_-let me in rinoa let me in let me in let me in LET ME IN-_

The room has shrunk around her, because none of this, this spray of lamp glow she flicks on with a shaking hand and that dark anonymous hump of foot locker at the edge of her bed, none of them have ever felt so close or tight or _suffocating _around her before, and as she staggers forward her foot hits something that tips over and scatters in the lamp glow, winking like gems underneath her bare feet.

Bright clacking mounds of fishing lures, clattering together like titters beneath her feet, and she is running running running, flying down the stairs ahead of them-

_-you can't outrun them stupid girl stupid _bitch _do you really think you don't need me rinoa let me in let GO-_

There is a prismatic fray of ultraviolet blue gathering in her hands, and she is not sure she put it there.

There are spots of bright, bright pain all across her body now, pore-width and then widening, and standing in front of wrap-around living room window, Rinoa can see she has become a torch.

There is light everywhere.

And it is leaking, it is _slithering _from her and she does not know how to stop it, and in her belly Squall's child writhes and kicks and strikes out with its tiny, tiny fists, drum solo constant like the pounding of her heart against her sternum.

It_ hurts_-

Squall is not here to save her, and this is not right, it is not _fair _because he _promised_-_I'll be here waiting_-

He is gone like he always is, like his absence inside that infirmary when the first tectonic shift of her life being pulled out from underneath her altered the entire world around Rinoa Heartilly. This resentment rips a hole inside her, a thin slit of a fissure that gapes wider and wider, because somewhere inside of her, a finger is probing around for cracks.

She stops, and she turns to face them.

She is starting to bleed from her fingertips and nose and even her eyes, and this drip drip drip that is her blood hitting the floor is the only thing she can hear through the oceanic pulse roar in her ears.

Their boots and breaths and even their rifles stop moving.

Somewhere inside of her, she or he or it-whatever this thing inside of her may be-is giggling.

_-ring around the rosy pocket full of posies-_

There is a slow uncoiling inside of her, like an unfurling of wings, flapping shockwave ripples of this thing that is inside of her all throughout Rinoa Heartilly, until she cannot tell where she begins and he or she or it ends. Something is tearing swelling _bulging _inside of her, and then it is spilling over, it is flickering coruscant jellyfish strands of light all around them, and this shining stretching globe she is the center of rises up and up and up, expands out and out and out-

_-ashes ashes we all fall down-_

She can feel her hair streaming all around her, and this back draft from this shining stretching globe ensnaring them all flares, and reaches out with tendrils that become pointing fingers.

_-ring around the rosy pocket full of posies hush little baby don't you cry ashes ashes we all fall down-_

The pointing fingers stretch out to touch them all.

_-ashes ashes ashes ashes rinoa hahahahahahahahahahahahaha ashes ashes papa's gonna buy you a mocking bird ring around the rosy we all fall down rinoa-_

Thin black stripes of rifle barrel and ugly pig's snout of gas mask; these coruscant jellyfish strands of pointing reaching fingers wrap and caress everything, until there is nothing but the light and this burning burning _burning _inside of her-

_-rinoa rinoa rinoa rinoa RINOA RINOA LET ME IN LET ME IN LET ME IN let me in said the wolf hahahahahahaha-_

She is sobbing.

And beneath the swollen skin of her belly, Squall's child is twisting and thrashing and she thinks with a broken hiccup of a laugh _let me out let me out let me out LET ME OUT_-

_-LET ME IN LET ME IN LET ME IN RINOA RINOA RINOA RINOA LET GO LET GO-_

There is a sensation like a breaking bubble inside her chest, pressure letting go, easing up, and everything goes white, endless shining monochrome as far as she can see, and inside of it people are screaming and she is screaming and Squall's baby is kicking kicking kicking-

_-ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes rinoa let me in rinoa let me in-_

Beneath her knees worn-pale carpeting scratches claw marks of rug burn down her legs, and all ten fingers twist into flat-stomped fibers that itch and burn and twitch like the thumping writhing living thing inside her chest-

Squall's child has gone motionless, and for one panicked, stomach lurch moment she thinks _is he dead IS HE DEAD_ and then the world around her becomes flat gray Time Compression, and everything is shredding apart around her in wisps of semi-consciousness that taste like ash in her mouth-

_-ring around the rosy pocket full of posies ashes ashes we all fall down hush little baby don't say a word you won't say a word will you rinoa let me in let me in RINOA LET ME IN_-

Something is banging scratching _howling _inside her head, and she closes her eyes like she is going to sleep, like she is drifting into wordless dreamless slumber inside his arms-

Their meadow is waiting for her, red-stained like it is draped in picturesque sunset.

Skeletons of dandelions become blurs of helicopter tailspin around her, crimson-splashed in what might be pretty shining dusk light, but is not.

He stands in the middle of them, holding their child, smiling across this open stretch of field between them, and against his chest his eyes dangle wet slaps of sagging optic nerve cables.

They are smiling at her too.

The sky above their meadow goes storm cloud gray, and then midnight black.

Emaciated dandelion lands its blur of helicopter tailspin on her open waiting hand.

_-hello rinoa hello hello let me in let me in let me in let me in ring around the rosy ring around the rosy pocket full of posies ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ashes ASHES ASHES ASHES ASHES ASHES-_

She closes her hand around this chattering twitching dandelion skeleton that puffs up like sun-banished cloud between her fingers, and above her the sky begins to bleed like the those ugly staring sockets watching her son.


	23. Chapter 21

**A/N: I'm going to try and post the last few chapters this weekend so that it's all over and done; like I mentioned earlier, this is already completed and I am already at work on my next writing project, so I'd like to have all the final editing for this done and out of the way so I can concentrate fully on my next project. Also, I am putting together an epub file for someone, and since the document in Works is not technically the final copy (I do my final read-through/final touches in Doc Manager) I can't get them the epub until the fic has been completed on this site. With that being said, if anyone wants the epub of this, contact me via PM or e-mail and I'll send it to you. Probably not much point, since everyone reading this has already burned their eyes out reading 200,000+ words on the computer, but since I'm going to have the file sitting on my computer anyway, I figured I'd throw out the offer. If you do e-mail me, however, please indicate in the title that you are messaging me in regards to this fic, or you'll probably get shuffled to my junk folder and deleted. Chapter 22 should be posted shortly after this (within a couple of hours or so, most likely,) and I'm hoping to have 23 and the epilogue up by tomorrow. If I don't have time to post them tomorrow, I've got a four day weekend coming up (love you, Thanksgiving,) so I should have plenty of time to post them by this weekend.**

**Jean-chan: I know a lot of people feel like if they don't have any constructive criticism to offer, then there is no point in reviewing, but I've never approached reviewing this way. I do offer constructive criticism if I have it, but I also think it can be helpful to point out to an author what they do well. I am always wondering how certain scenes I write come across to readers, so when someone reviews and says 'x scene was done really well-you could really feel blah blah's despair yadda yadda yadda' then it tells me that whatever method I used to approach a certain scenario is working and is one I should stick with. And yes, it's nice to get encouragement too-if every single one of my reviewers only told me what I needed to work on and never offered any opinion on what I did well, then it would sort of feel like there wasn't anything about my writing that people thought was well done. Which...would be a real kick in the sack, considering how long I've been writing. (If I had a sack to kick anyway...kick in the ovaries, maybe?)**

**Angie: I admit that gave me a chuckle, after I did the whole 'Gah, it's one of them!' (I did not look at the name attached to the review before reading said review. Haha.)**

**nikpt-o: Thanks for popping in! To be honest, feedback really does not motivate me to write. (Or not write.) I've been writing stories basically since I first learned how to write and highly doubt that will ever change, because it's something I'm truly passionate about. However, it does sort of discourage me from posting if I feel like I'm not going to get any (or hardly any) feedback. I mean, no one shares their writing just for shits and giggles, y'know? They share it because they want to know what people think. And yes, I agree Seiftis authors and readers seem to be a dying breed, which is really too bad. I really encourage everyone to review if you are following a S/Q story you're really enjoying, because I know I have seriously questioned whether I will post my next couple of S/Q fics due to how much the fandom has died down, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way. **

**Also, one final note; a few reviews I've received have given me the impression the reviewer is afraid of coming across like a dumbass, and maybe I'm just interpreting them incorrectly, but guys, I want you to know I am not sitting here judging your reviews. I am not hunched in front of my computer going 'lol what a tard I totally just lost brain cells reading that.' I just appreciate that you took the time to write something. (Ok-unless it's 'lol dis rlly iz da freekin shite ima show dis to evry1 cuz its mi f8vrit. Please don't write like that. It hurts my brain.)**

**Goddamn this was long. Maybe I need to just start PMing people. I guess maybe it's a good thing I only get, like, three reviews per chapter then. Imagine how long these things would be if I had 20 reviews a chapter?**

**Chapter Twenty One**

Presidential Palace

Esthar

They have nine days together.

He spends most of them tangled up in her sheets and the scent of her hair, letting her show him his mother does not have to lurk in every sigh and caress and feather graze of lip press, hiding teeth like filed-sharp needles of predator fang.

She is so very fucking beautiful, he can't believe she even wants to touch him.

At night when she is curled up beside him breathing the soft rhythmic inhalation of out-cold slumber, he doesn't sleep, because watching her is more important.

He doesn't have very long left to do it.

There's a fucking shitstorm brewing out there, and she might not see it, here inside this fortress behind her computer and her books, but on the streets he sees every little flint strike flicker that will become an inferno, and he knows it's too goddamned stupidly optimistic to pray they both get through it all without being burned.

Once upon a time, he wanted to be burned. Once upon a time, Seifer Almasy dreamed about being a whole fucking conflagration all on his own, and now when the world is ready to splinter just the way he wanted it to, he is fucking praying it will hold on, for just a little longer.

He brushes his scarred murderer's hands down her pretty unblemished back, and he thinks for just one goddamned moment in his whole fucking life, he wants something to go his way, no strings attached.

He wants this woman in his bed every night, smiling half-asleep up at him like he's the only thing she wants to see, for the rest of her life.

He wants he wants he fucking wants-shit in one hand and wish in the other, and which one fills up faster?

So he makes it all fucking count. Every second of a look, a touch, a hastily-stolen kiss he takes when no one else is looking-he crams them all, as many as he can fit, into each day as the tick tick tick of the counter that is his life winding down hisses like his heartbeat in his ears.

At night she is all his, and he pretends she feels the same way he does, like something inside of her is on fire knowing this is all going to come crashing down around their ears, like the first half second he is gone will be too fucking long for her. It's already goddamned unbearable for him, and it hasn't even happened yet.

His days are a long rain-soaked blur of waiting to get back to her.

And on the ninth one, everything begins to come apart, just like he always knew it would.

* * *

><p>He pinned her underneath tepid spray from the showerhead, running his hands up her breasts and his nose down her cheek.<p>

"Seifer." Her hands thumped wetly up against his shoulders. "We've been in here for almost an hour."

He let his smirk spread wide enough to show teeth. "Come on, Instructor; don't tell me you've been keeping track of the time with everything else going on. Besides, where the fuck are you keeping your watch?"

She teetered a little as he slid both hands down to cup her ass, pulling her up against him. "There's a clock on the wall. I was supposed to meet Ellone half an hour ago."

"She'll live."

"I'm _late,_" Quistis said like she was announcing the end of the world, and her hands against his shoulders became more insistent.

"I'll make it worth it." Seifer ran his tongue across her nipple, jerking her hips into his until both eyes started to glaze over again; he freed one hand and used it to twitch the curtain down across the sliver of opening she must have been using to keep one eye on that fucking clock, and turned his full attention back to her breast.

"Seifer." Her voice had gone a little hoarse, her hands against his shoulders much less resolute now, and he smiled as he moved from her breast up to the curve of her neck; she shifted one hand from his shoulder to the nape of his neck, and he knew when the fingers tangled there closed spastically that this ridiculous fucking shit about being late was all over, for right now.

Their lips crashed together as he hiked one of her legs up over his hip, and he slid into her like his tongue inside her mouth, and when she made that little noise in the back of her throat he almost fucking lost it right then. An hour of this dick teasing shit and he was wound as tight as a goddamned virgin slipping off his first pair of panties; Seifer fisted his hand in her hair and yanked her head back, hard, and the corresponding upstroke of her hips thrusting back made him grind his mouth up against hers like he wanted to hurt her.

He didn't. It just turned out all those hormonal daydreams spun out in the back of her classroom about bland, walking wet-dream Instructor Trepe turned out to be almost on the fucking nose after all-regimentally upright, perpetually stick-fucked Quistis Trepe liked it a little rough. Seifer had the fucking nail marks to prove it.

He was still trying to figure out how to broach the topic of bringing her whip into bed-barbs safety-taped, of course-without getting hit.

Quistis muffled a sharp gasp against his shoulder, and he backed her up against the wall with a noisy, stall-shuddering thud that shoved him deeper into her. She started to push back with her hips, hard enough to leave him grunting and shivering underneath that tepid spray sluicing finger-width trails of cooling water down his back, and when she hissed another little moan between teeth she dug into his shoulder and began to pulse around him like she was trying to take his dick right fucking off, he pulled Quistis up against him by the ends of her trailing hair, her cold-pebbled nipples right up against his.

He came with a shaky little cry he muffled against her lips, and there was his mother, looking out at him from behind the prison cells that fucking woman had made of her eyes-

No-

Just Quistis underneath him, Quistis all around him, her hair and lips and hands that didn't want to punish him, gentle little swipes of fingers not tipped in manicured-razor point she used to tenderly push hair out of his eyes.

He stood there under the showerhead for another moment, just holding her against him. You could make all the fucking comments you wanted about this vagina he'd suddenly grown the moment brutal Disciplinarian Committee leader Seifer Almasy figured out he loved something that wasn't his own reflection staring back at him, but this, right here-this flesh twitch of shiver starting to make its way through her body and wet-slap of hair cord, rope-thick and draped between them like a fucking curtain-

This was the best thing his whole battered, splintered fucking life had ever offered him. Maybe his own goddamned mother hadn't loved him enough to save him-

But maybe this woman would, you know? Eventually. Possibly. Fuck, probably not, but an idiot with his head far enough up his ass to avoid the truth could hope, couldn't he? Hope was such a feeble fucking thing as it was-no sense letting reality rear its ugly fucking head.

He kissed the hollow between her collarbones, and pulled out of her.

Later, draped across his bed with his head in her lap and her apology call to Ellone still ringing in his ears, Seifer stared up at his ceiling.

Nine days and counting, and those fucking shadows kept putting in increasingly more sparse appearances, until he let himself begin to tentatively pray that one day, he'd look up into just white-plaster popcorn knurls like the slight mismatched humps of his old-broken knuckles.

It was time to go back to the days when a ceiling was just a fucking ceiling.

He wanted to tell her he wasn't at all fucking sure he could do it without her, but he'd made enough of a woman out of himself in front of Quistis. He could at least half-ass a playact where he still had his balls.

"I wonder how Rinoa's doing," she said quietly, combing one hand absently through his hair.

"Pissing a lot, if those fucking heinous three days I spent stuck in the same car as her were any indication," Seifer snorted, popping his knuckles.

He could hear a smile in her voice. "You used to date her, if you remember."

"Yeah, back when I was a teenager. Teenage males are basically the human race's version of a dog in heat, Trepe-we'll hump your fucking leg if you don't keep a close eye on us. Rinoa was there. Oh yeah, and Daddy Caraway hated me, so that was kind of a bonus."

"Seifer; don't talk about her like that. You broke out of the disciplinary room and took President Deling hostage just to help the Timber Owls. You obviously cared for her."

"Not 'just,' Trepe. I really kind of did like scaring the shit out of the prick." He slipped one finger into his mouth, gnawing a fray of hangnail with little teeth-clicks that echoed oddly in the silence. "Rinoa's the kind of girl you date because she's pretty and she needs someone to take care of her, and when you're a teenage boy with something to prove, that's all you really fucking need, you know? But it gets old. Fast. And then it all just starts to sound like a bunch of whining. Pubes, though, he needs someone to make him feel like three inches at full mast is ok."

"Seifer." She had that scolding schoolteacher reproach back in her voice, and he grinned as he picked up the hand that had stopped against his hair, and brought it to his lips.

"Anyway, Pubes' precious little princess is fine. Or at least she was when I talked to her."

"You talked to her?" Quistis' hand against his mouth had gone very still.

"Yeah; I was the only contact Raij had in his phone that she recognized, so she called my fucking cell phone at 3:00 in the morning wanting to talk to Pubes."

"Recently?" He felt her go stiff underneath him.

"Week, week and a half ago. Something like that. Why?"

"She isn't supposed to talk to any of us-not until we're sure it's safe. That's the whole point of putting her into hiding, Seifer." There was a knife-edged point to her voice that was starting to make him nervous.

"I know; that's what I told her. I didn't _make _her call me, Trepe. Don't get pissy with me."

"There's a traitor somewhere in the Palace; I've spent the last couple of weeks attempting to hack into the system and put tracers on all employee activity. There are several financial discrepancies that Ellone discovered recently, evidence that someone has been siphoning off small amounts of gil from several different accounts to try and avoid notice, and the breach in Palace security that prompted Laguna to hire us in the first place was conducted far too easily. If one of his advisors or staff supervisors is passing information off to the other side, it's very possible they have phones tapped. And that they are specifically looking for information related to Rinoa."

Something inside Seifer's chest spread finger-width tendrils of cold that latched like little fucking claws into his heart. "It was a cell phone-"

"Cell phones are easily traceable, Seifer. I've done it before on renaissance missions."

He shot up from the bed like she'd just fucking stabbed him, crawling over her lap to reach his phone on the nightstand, his heart an entire fucking three-piece orchestra in his chest, crashing up against his ribcage hard enough to hurt. He thumbed the small flip phone open, scrolled his contacts list down to Raijin's name, and punched the call button hard enough to sting his thumb.

"We're sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service."

"_Fuck_!"

"Seifer-"

"Shit shit _shit_-I've gotta' get down there."

"It's a four day drive, Seifer. Longer on public transportation, and Esthar has shut their transit system down for the moment, anyway."

"His fucking phone's out of service, Trepe!" he snapped, hurling aside the useless fucking thing in his hand; it whistled through a long high arc that smashed it up against the wall, spitting pieces of splintered plastic casing that reminded him of Messenger Girl's camera and her big blinking eyes and that line of red like his mother's nails, crawling over her lip-Quistis sobbing in his arms and the grave mound of new-turned dirt he kept staring at like if he just kept fucking looking at it long enough, it would take that look off his old instructor's pretty grieving face, and he couldn't fucking _think_-

He yanked on his boots and then remembered he wasn't even wearing a shirt; he jerked one out of the polished maplewood dresser along the far wall and slammed it down over his head, then resumed tying his shoes.

"Seifer, calm down."

"Don't tell me to _fucking calm down_, Instructor!" he snarled. "If someone went in there to get Rinoa, what the fuck do you think happened to Raijin and Fujin? You think they just stood aside and let some dickheads carry her off? If they're not already-" He heard his voice hitch and he had to sit down with his hand over his eyes, perched on the edge of that bed like it was his fucking anchor in this world that had suddenly become the liquid-ripple uncertainty of Time Compression around him. "I have to warn them."

"It's going to take you days to even get there. Before anyone panics, let's just think about this rationally; we need to get into contact with them first, establish that they're all right, and then move Rinoa somewhere else, just to be on the safe side."

"Yeah? And how are you going to fucking contact them when Raij's goddamned number is out of service?"

"You don't have Fuijin's?"

"I would have fucking called it if I had it, don't you think?" He snatched his trench coat from the back of the desk chair and jammed both arms through the sleeves, snarling epitaphs as he got himself tangled up in it. Quistis helped him straighten it, reaching out both hands to grip him firmly by the forearms.

"Seifer, look at me. Please." She touched his cheek with the backs of her fingers, and maybe before that had been enough to bring this new Seifer with the perpetual hard-on for his old instructor to a screeching fucking halt, but now with the jumble of nightmare inside his head that was Raijin's lip-gape of throat wound and Fujin's blind-frosted marble eyes staring open and sightless and empty at the ceiling above her, he just shrugged it off.

He pulled away, and left her standing alone in the middle of the room.

He hit a dead sprint halfway down the hall.

* * *

><p>5 Days Later<p>

Presidential Palace

Esthar

Ward's throat is a tangle of wet-shine cable cords, yarn skein snarled.

The yarn is red, and it runs like paint.

And Selphie beside him, smiling up at her with lips coated this same shade of crimson gloss, vibrant cosmetic that does not suit her at all_-her mother's lips are red and open and smiling around needle-point teeth that hook into boy Seifer's throat like talon's-_

She has no eyes.

They are maggot-squirm holes of empty writhing socket, and in the dirt at her feet rabid-gleam dots of rodent's eyes in the dark wink up at her.

It is Quistis lying inside the coffin now, and Selphie closing it over her.

Ward gives a dry rasping cough of a laugh, and fingers the strands of wet-shine cable cords dangling from his neck.

The sky overhead disappears with an echoic thud she can feel in her bones, and from somewhere inside the coffin, Matron's voice says "Seifer be a good little boy; you don't want mommy to hurt you, do you?"

There are hands on her in the dark, and she is lying fetal-curled on a bed that smells like her mother, and her lips twitch soundless jerking sobs that ripple out through her shoulders-

She is so very alone, and the princesses in the stories and the knights who rode off into sunsets to save them-they are all _lies_, because she was supposed to be one of them, and nothing went the way the stories _said _it would-

She does the same thing every night, on this bed that smells like her mother, over and over and over again, and wrinkles of sex-rumpled bedcover become cold blood-soaked wood board beneath her cheek, and it is all the same to her. It is all the same because Matron stopped loving her a long time ago, because kind smiling Matron offering her cookies warm from the stove doesn't care enough to stop this winter-eyed bitch that is taking her all apart, one gangrene-eaten section at a time.

The nightmares smear together into one long stream-of-conciousness blur, until she is not sure anymore when she is awake, and when she is sleeping.

They come at her like prize fighter's punches that do not let up, ceaseless hammering explosions that light up the insides of her eyelids like fireworks.

She dreams about the fireworks, too.

In childhood memories that she can just barely remember, these whispers of sound and sight and salt-tang smell of incoming ocean tide, there is a small blonde-haired boy standing beside her clutching his stick sword and smiling as he looks up into the sky.

In her dreams, he is a man, and he is smiling at her, and as this sky that blooms fractal branches of multi-colored lines like spindly reaching limbs goes off above her, she feels him slip his hand into hers. His fingers are very warm, and scar-rough. The moonlight and these fractal multi-colored lines make his face look very soft-or perhaps it has always looked this way, and she has simply not bothered to pay attention.

Matron is waving to them from her garden, both hands full of soil.

_-seifer quistis come inside it's getting cold dinner will get cold if you don't come inside soon ok-_

He is kneeling at her feet with his head bent and his stick sword out and she stands alone now on this beach with its stretch-taffy smears of red and purple and orange-swirled green, and this woman with the cold-winter eyes who used to be Matron-

She is _winning._

And this boy with his stick sword and that man with the smile-they are slipping away from her, and she is watching a woman in black and violet with the same cold-winter eyes hold out her hand to him, and this man who used to be her student, this man who was supposed to be her triumph-

He is taking the hand, and he is not looking back at her.

She tries to call out to him; her voice is a rough sandpaper hiss against her throat, terminal patient rasp she can barely hear herself.

There is a blood-soaked deck beneath her, and this woman with the cold-winter eyes who used to be Matron handing out cookies and bandaging scrapes is violating her, or him-she is not sure anymore, because one moment it is him on those gore-splashed deck boards staring up at her like she can help him, and then it is her trying not to cry with her cheek pressed to cold slippery floorboards that smell like death, and all she can think, the only thing she can _process _through this slow-trickle of horror trying to numb her mind is _seifer I'm sorry I should have _done _something-_

She wakes up the same way every night he is gone, in twists of sheet that form strangleholds around her limbs.

The phone does not ring.

* * *

><p>Ranru<p>

Centra

Their graves are just twin humps of fresh-tilled earth in front of him, sprinkled in violets.

He is standing in front of them with his hands in his pockets, thinking about death and why this abstract twist of _thing _called fate has come for them but not him. It's not that he deserves to live anymore than they do, you know?

His eyes scrape like sand grit between his teeth in both sockets, because he has not slept for three fucking days.

When he does, he dreams about Time Compression. It's a long endless sprint through gray-smudged smog that pokes at him like it's made of teeth, or little fucking claws, and he can't find her anywhere in it. There is no blue or gold or pink-peach or whatever the fuck the color of that favorite outfit of hers is, and when he finally gives up, when he sits down with his head in his hands trying not to bawl, it's like he's a fucking kid all over again, boy Seifer sniffling in front of that fucking ocean because no one picked him.

He just wants to _fucking know why_. Why they followed him through that shitstorm of a war, doing what he told them to, jumping when he snapped his fingers until the water finally got too fucking hot, and they had to leap out or get boiled to death. Why the _fuck _he couldn't just leave them to their marriage and their house by the ocean and the shitty old truck Raijin had to kick three times before it'd turn over and start with a sputter that sounded like it was going to die all over again.

Why it's the heroes who have to bite the bullet again, and not a shitty ex-knight who was never a very good knight in the first place, not if you go off those storybook fuckers, anyway.

He wants to know why their goddamned hick neighbors buried them in the backyard like family pets-doesn't this shitty backwoods fucking _hole _have a goddamned graveyard?

Maybe it's because the house is an ozone-reeking crater behind him; it's not like anyone else is going to be moving into this slag heap.

He can't find that stupid fucking mutt anywhere.

He doesn't know who dug these graves, or erected these plain headboards of gravestones that still smell like the woods, like they are fresh-cut timber hauled in for just this purpose.

They were already here when he arrived. Nothing he can do to change anything, because he's too late, because he's an impotent little fuck who can't do anything right, who can't score a single fucking point for the winning team-and who the fuck _is _the winning team anymore, anyway? It's not the good guys. The protagonists in Matron's stories would all be three-zip right now, about to ride off into the sunset with monster guts and villain blood and all that shit still shining on their swords and teeth-gleam of hero's smile, glinting in the sun.

The good guys in this story, in this shitty little tale that is his life, drain-circle fucking horrible, are dropping like goddamned flies. Falling all around him, because one scissor-snip from that bitch Fate, and there goes everything, life thread you can't stitch back into the tapestry that is your whole goddamned existence.

He's squatting in front of Raijin's grave for a long, long time, thinking about his friend fishing on a dock, wrestling him in the gym, sneaking fries from Fujin's lunch tray, when suddenly a punch makes it through all the layers and layers of anesthetic numbness that have tied themselves around his heart, and this direct shot to the chest makes him hunch over, sobbing and screaming and clawing up fistfuls of dirt, like if he can just dig all the fucking way down to them, he'll figure out this is all one big fucking mistake. It's not Raij and Fu under this shitty dying lawn they were starting to build a life around-someone etched the wrong names on these gravestones that smell like the woods boy Seifer used to play in, and there's no fucking reason at all for him to be crouched here snotting all over him fucking self like he's still that stupid fucking kid who put his hand down on the front burner and didn't pull it back in time. That's the pain going through him right now-hot and sharp and prickling, throbbing like another pulse inside of him, and he's still feeling it, still lying there with his cheek pressed to that shitty dying grass when it starts to rain.

The grass becomes blood-slimed deck boards underneath him, and his mother is leaning over him, telling him to be good.

He's never been any fucking good-can't she _understand _that? He's never even bothered to try, because somewhere deep down inside of him, Seifer always knew it was all a fucking waste. Great men don't have to be good men-they just have to do something that sets the whole world on fire, that wakes up the whole fucking planet, and makes them want to be you. Not because you're kind or selfless or you've got a pair of fucking puppy eyes like Wuss trying to beg a hot dog, but because you're the man on fire, the goddamned hero of the story who's going to get the princess in the end, even if you're a dick who shit all over anyone in the way on your journey to the top.

It's men like that who are supposed to die young, who are supposed to have brilliant fleeting lives that go down in flames.

Not happy smiling oafs like Raijin, who played the shittiest game of Triple Triad Seifer had ever seen, and fished with a lot fucking more enthusiasm than skill, who'd stayed up all night with him the first time he got gut-vomiting drunk, wiping pieces of Garden's dinner off his face and cleaning up the floor when he didn't get to the toilet in time.

He blinks into the dirt that is stuck to the side of his face.

There is rainwater running down his cheeks, but that's all right-at least he doesn't have to think about how it's not all precipitation, how the great and mighty Seifer Almasy is just a fucking pussy sobbing like Wuss over a dropped ice cream cone.

He wishes there was someone here to help him get back up.

He wishes _she _was here to pull him back up by those tiny hands wrapped in the folds of trench coat collar that are bunched up around his chin smeared in mud and tears and snot.

But she's not his fucking crutch; she can't be, because he's the fucking knight, not the princess, or at least he's supposed to be, and she's not here anyway.

He has to scrape himself off the ground, and figure out a way to keep going.

He lays a spray of lilies he finds in a front yard flower pot over the mound of Fujin's grave, because they were her favorites, and then he heads into town to find a pay phone.

* * *

><p>Balamb Garden<p>

Balamb

Squall was sitting at his desk staring down at the stacks and stacks of paperwork waiting for him when his phone rang.

He lifted it mechanically to his ear.

And then he sat for a long, long time, listening to the dial tone, to the three words that were an endless drain-circling inside his head, going around and around and around like the smears of color that were Selphie's hand-drawn decorations, taped up around the office she'd insisted was far too boring. They rippled and slithered and tried to crawl off the walls, because he hadn't gotten enough sleep lately, or because his entire world was slowly, one piece at a time, folding in on itself. Click click clicks of falling Dominoes, tumbling down around his ears, fragmentary splinters breaking off like space entry gone wrong.

_"Rinoa's gone, Leonhart_."

It took him an eternity to finally hang up.

There was suddenly a paper in front of him, occupying the single square of bare wood on his entire desk, and a pen in his fingers that he had to stare at for a long moment, wondering how it had gotten there.

He stood up stiffly, like his limbs were no longer quite sure how to operate correctly.

He found Nida on the top deck, messing around with settings and mechanics far beyond his capacity to understand, and this paper that had somehow appeared in front of him on that one plain square of empty desk wood extended outward in a fist clutch Squall wasn't sure was his.

He couldn't feel his fingers anymore.

He couldn't feel _anything_, not around this gnawing prickling throat squeeze that spread downward to his chest and from there to his gut, and the little gnashing teeth worrying away at his airway unstrung everything inside of him, until he couldn't be sure how he was even standing anymore.

Nida straightened and crisply saluted. "Commander?"

"This is my resignation," Squall said in a calm, flat voice that did not belong inside the raging tearing cauldron his gut and chest and throat had become.

Nida's brow furrowed. "Sir? Your resignation? I don't-"

"Chain of command dictates you are now in charge," Squall interrupted blandly, folding his hands behind him. He brought his heels together in a precise parade rest alignment that matched his spine, ship mast straight. "Sir."

The elbow he crooked out brought his hand up through a slow loop of salute that turned Nida's face into something pinched and confused and uncertain, and then he saw nothing else.

He was already walking away, his hand on Lionheart.

* * *

><p>Presidential Palace<p>

Esthar

He came back unexpectedly.

And like the boy from the back of her classroom, brash and loud and reckless with his feet up on his desk, he made an entrance.

Quistis had Irvine's head in her lap and a ledger of financial columns in one hand when the door to Laguna's office exploded open, and in the hallway outside she heard shouts that became wet-gurgles of cut-off protests.

Ellone and Zell and Laguna had all gone to their feet; Quistis had Save the Queen in one palm before Irvine could even sit up all the way, and she did not relax as he came charging through into the square of open floor not occupied by stiff-backed SeeDs or the cringing profile of Esthar's vice president, hunched up in the corner like he was trying to shield himself.

" _Who the fuck is it_?" he screamed. "Who's the _fucking _traitor?"

"Seifer-"

One sweep of gray-frayed trench coat sleeve sent the entire contents of Laguna's desk crashing to the floor. The guard posted beside him made a lunge Seifer ducked, coming up with a fistful of the man's hair that he wrenched like he was trying to take the entire scalp off, and Quistis heard a wet tear like butcher's cleaver sticking halfway through the cut. "Seifer, _stop_."

There were guards pouring in behind him now, swinging shoulder-slung rifles down into position as he turned on them like a cornered animal, empty-handed and ready to take them all on, each and every one, and her heart in her chest gave a frantic hummingbird flutter that smashed it up into her throat.

The clicks of half a dozen safeties going off became an eternal thundering well-echo inside her head.

She dropped Save the Queen and dove, her hands open and weaponless and extended like a prayer, stretching out toward those black gapes of rifle snout all centered on him as he shoved past her in a linebacker rush she tried to stop. Her fingers missed his sleeve, skidded off the point of elbow he brought up and over into the jaw of the guard closest to him, and her composure was fleeing rushing _pouring _out of her because he was going to die in this stretch of ruffled carpet between them, in this moment of cinematic slow motion that went on forever, that she could not stop-

The wall-shuddering bark of Laguna's voice came too late, as the guard posted on the farthest fringe of the group and angled sideways so he would not hit the president brought his finger smoothly up inside the trigger guard, and fired.

"_Stop! Don't hurt him!_"

She did not recognize her own voice as the first slug hammered him back, blew him soaring off his feet, as the rifle boomed like a shriek of artillery blast in the small room, as Laguna's voice rose and rose and rose, trying to make itself known above the pounding in her ears and the bolt-clunk of cycling round she couldn't stop in time either.

"Hold fire! _Hold fire_!" Laguna roared.

Quistis hurled herself in front of the next volley.

She took them all in the throat.

The world became a soundless vacuum, a Time Compression smear of gray smog-shroud and faces that melted and warped and folded in on themselves like collapsing tracheas, gurgling final death sighs.

She could hear herself now, hiccupping little breaths that did not make it all the way down into her lungs. There was a hand around her throat, squeezing squeezing squeezing, and the ceiling above her and the curve of wall underneath it went tear-film blurry, until she could not distinguish one from the other.

His face on the floor beside her rolled over to blink sleepless bloodshot eyes at her, and there were tears on his cheeks and lips and chin.

She faded out of consciousness with his fingers on her cheek.

* * *

><p>"Damn, Quisty, that's a hell of a bruise." Zell whistled appreciatively, tipping her face up by the chin.<p>

She sighed, pulling gently away from his fingers to bring the point of her chin down into one palm, a slump that pulled her shoulders up around her ears. "I'm glad you like it. Who knew those riot slugs were so…potent?" she said wryly, brushing strands of hair down around her neck in a spray that partially covered the ugly fist-sized print of mottled purple there.

He sat down on the edge of her bed, the frame creaking underneath him. "Did you know they were loaded with riot slugs when you jumped in front of them?" Zell asked quietly, looking at his hands knotted between his knees.

Quistis rubbed her face with her hands, keeping them there for an extra moment. "No. I did not."

"So you jumped out in front of them like that thinking you were going to die?" He cracked his knuckles. "That's ballsy, Quisty."

"I wasn't thinking about _anything_. I was just trying to stop them from shooting Seifer again."

He squinted at her in the mirror she kept trying not to look at. "Don'tcha think you probably love him, jumping in front of him like that without even thinking about it? I mean, you didn't know you weren't going to die. So, like, you were basically sacrificing yourself for him, y'know?"

Quistis sighed and rubbed her face again. "It was just an instinct from years of training, Zell. It doesn't need to be analyzed."

"Ok, but I'm telling ya' Quisty-cut the guy a break. He needs something good in his life right now, huh?"

"I've never heard you petition so hard for Seifer's happiness."

He popped his knuckles again, little firecracker bursts that tightened her teeth inside her mouth until she could see a bulge of deformity in the smooth sleek line of her jaw. "He's in a lot of trouble for stealing that car from the garage. And, ya' know, beating up all those guards. And breaking Laguna's office. Laguna didn't want him arrested, though. Guess he figured finding Raijin and Fujin dead was more than enough punishment." Zell tapped the tips of his sneakers against the floor, drumbeat regularity that she found herself concentrating on; it was the only thing she wanted to focus on, in a room that echoed around her with the sonic sound barrier crack of emptying rifles and lamp shade shatter she kept hearing every time she closed her eyes. "You gonna' go see him? I tried to, but he didn't want to talk. Ellone left some food outside his door for him 'cause he hasn't eaten the whole time he's been back, or something. He just sits inside his room."

She felt a hollow little pit in her stomach, widening like a maw. She knew; she had accidentally kicked the plate when she'd knocked on his door two days ago and gotten nothing but empty echoing silence in response. "I think Seifer just wants to be left alone right now."

"Yeah, I guess." Zell scratched the top of his head, frowning. "Almasy's not really good at asking for help, though. Maybe he wants it, you know? He just doesn't know what to say, or he's afraid of looking like a pussy."

Quistis smiled just slightly, fingering the bruise on her throat and watching the mirror image reverse of herself do the same. "You're more perceptive than you know, Zell."

A knock on her door rocketed the martial artist back onto his feet, and halfway across the room before she could even blink. "I got it!"

"Evenin', ma'am," Irvine drawled from the open doorway, tipping his hat to her. "I'm here to pick Dincht up for our date."

"Huh?"

"Patrol duty, ya' jackass."

"Shit; forgot."

"I figured. Quisty, our fearless leader's here. Wants to see you, as soon as you have time." Irvine's forehead bunched up in a frown. "He resigned. Soon as he got the call from Almasy about Rinoa, apparently."

"Squall resigned?" she repeated, frowning into the mirror that showed her all the little imperfections she kept trying to forget, fault line cracks in the flawless Instructor's façade she felt breaking apart a little more each day.

"Yep. As of right now, he's just a regular lil' ol' SeeD like the rest of us."

Quistis sighed. "Well, I don't think any of us expected him to just stay at Garden with Rinoa missing. I think Nida is more than capable of handling Squall's responsibilities, but a shift in leadership right now is going to be precarious. Garden is teetering on the edge as it is; this isn't going to help with stability."

"Yeah, but you gotta' do what you gotta' do. And what's important right now is getting Rinoa back, right?" Zell cut in, hopping lightly up and down on the balls of his feet and shaking out his arms. "And that's what we're going to do. 'Cause whoever those assholes are that took her, they can't get away with it."

"They're not going to, Dincht." Irvine motioned to the hallway behind him with a jerk of his chin. "Come on; let's get goin'. Quisty doesn't need you hanging around here all day annoyin' the crap out of her."

"Hey, I'm not annoying! You're probably thinking about yourself, Kinneas. I'm like a little beam of light in everyone's life."

"Nothin' little about your voice, that's for Hyne damn sure."

They were still mildly bickering when the door shut behind them, and Quistis turned back to the mirror with a head shake that picked her hair up off the bruise she had arranged it over and fanned it back out across both shoulders.

For a moment, all she could see was her scar, ragged and ugly and dimpling soft pale cheek skin like the jagged tooth imprints of a mauling, representative of everything that was wrong with her. A lonely unloved child sitting all alone at mirror-polished dining room table-that was still all she was sometimes, not accomplished, overachieving Instructor Trepe, but a small blonde-haired girl waiting for the knight in Matron's stories to carry her off on his white horse, because that was what always happened to the princesses in the fictions from which Seifer had drawn all his inspiration. Perhaps she wasn't really a princess after all, if no one was coming to rescue her-Seifer had always wanted her to play one in the scenarios he was always setting up as a child, but this cold uninterested woman and this man who barely glanced at her when he arrived home from work-they seemed to think she was nothing special. She was another pretty decoration in this empty echoic house that thundered with silence, not a child that needed to laugh or play or build sandcastles along a beach for a shrieking blonde-haired boy to kick over.

Perhaps this scar was everything twisted and broken off inside of Quistis Trepe, leaking through to the surface.

Seifer, whatever Ultimecia had conditioned him to believe, was not the unlovable one. He had not been sent back by a family that was supposed to love him, packaged up like merchandise that had not worked out and left alone on a front porch blinking away drops of rain he had to pretend were not mixed with tears.

He had not had to face the look on Matron's face, the semi-second flash of 'didn't we already get rid of this one' shock she could not conceal quite in time, and he did not have to stand on that same front porch blinking back rain and tears and clutching a home-stitched Chocobo doll that was his only anchor in a world that didn't care about him anymore.

She rubbed her hands over her face, pulling her hair back over that scar and the fist-sized stain of contusion she was tired of staring at.

The knock on her door went on for a long time before she unfolded both legs from underneath her like arthritic stumps of old woman limb, and staggered stiffly toward it. Squall, probably, unused to his recent self-demotion and not having his requests obeyed like the thinly veiled commands they were.

She swung the door open to find Seifer staring down at her through those same sleepless bloodshot eyes.

He said nothing.

She stepped into his arms without a word.

He let his own limbs dangle limply along his sides for a long time, and she kept her cheek pressed to his chest and both arms around his waist until she felt the vibration of his long shuddering breath underneath her face, and finally those limp dangling limbs came up around her in an embrace that crushed her against him, that smashed every square millimeter of breath from her lungs, and put Quistis up on her toes close enough for him to press his forehead against hers.

He had both eyes shut.

She drew him inside without speaking, shutting the door behind them both.

Squall could wait.

* * *

><p>He kept seeing Fujin's silver comma mark of hair every time he shut his eyes, red-painted steel that burned like a fucking afterimage of sunspot behind his lids.<p>

He wasn't sure he ever wanted to fucking sleep again.

His mother, his Posse-even that little fucking dickhead Malcolm with his broken shutter angle of a jaw, waiting for him in the dark, chewing away at him like fucking rats in a cupboard, trying to gnaw their way out-where the fuck would it all end? With him dead in a fucking hole somewhere, with no more demons to haunt him? Was that the only fucking way to stop them?

She'd fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder.

He looked down at her in the dark, brushing a piece of hair from her pretty moonlit profile, and the only thing he could think staring down at this curve of mouth he'd nearly memorized, was what he'd have to give up just to stop these fuckers coming for him in the dark. Her legs entwined with his on the bed, and the self-conscious nose wrinkle of her laugh when he said something that embarrassed her-this pale slender hand palm down against his chest, a center of warmth when everything else-his whole fucking body, all his goddamned limbs and that stupid fucking lump of ice in his chest that used to be his heart-reminded him of goddamned Trabia in the dead of winter.

Maybe she didn't love him back, but he still wanted-he fucking _needed_-the possibility that she might one day, you know? He wanted Pubes and the Princess and all that queer shit he'd always turned his nose up at before, because he was Seifer goddamned Almasy and he didn't need that. Seifer goddamned Almasy, who could do anything because his mother had believed in him, Seifer goddamned Almasy, whose mother had taken a shit all over his dreams when he most needed them.

Seifer goddamned Almasy and Quistis fucking Trepe, living out one fucked-up distortion of a fairytale, and you know, he didn't even care if everything was backwards, if the princess only sort of liked the knight and the knight had royally ass-fucked his one shot at glory-

He just wanted the happy ending.

He wanted this woman in his arms like this, every night. He wanted them all to have a little fucking peace of mind, the cowboy and his grief, that fucking idiot Dincht and his endless yapping motor mouth, and even that freak Pubes and all the rainbows and kittens and fucking marshmallows that were his relationship with the pretty little princess who'd partially removed the stick from his asshole.

That wasn't so goddamned much to ask, was it?

Beside him Quistis stirred, her head on his shoulder sliding down to his bicep as both eyes blinked languorously up at him, sleep-hazed. He brushed his hand down over her cheek, letting his thumb linger over that jagged radial of damaged skin tissue, coarse as his forehead.

"Are you all right?" she asked, her voice still slumber-thick.

He shifted his thumb to the bruise on her throat, not answering. "That's a nasty fucking bruise, Instructor."

She lifted herself on an elbow, poking the glasses she had fallen asleep in back into position, her mouth a wry twist across her face. "Well, I'm glad you're impressed by it. It wouldn't be here if not for you, after all."

"Tch. You didn't have to jump in front of me."

Quistis sighed. "No. You're right; I didn't."

He kept his eyes on that heliotrope imprint, wide as a fist. "So why did you? That was pretty fucking stupid, Trepe. What if those had been real bullets?"

She removed her glasses slowly, folding them carefully before setting them aside on the nightstand beside her bed, rubbing the bridge of her nose like she could peel off the layers of skin there right down to the bone. The silence between them became a boulder in his gut, and it wasn't like he needed another fucking one of _those_, sitting there beside the deadweights of Raijin's death, and of Fujin's. Fucking peas in a pod, all jumbled together in his stomach and his chest and his fucking throat, and why the fuck was she just _looking _at him like that?

Seifer's arm beneath her head twitched, trying to regain blood flow to the anesthetized flesh there.

"I don't know." Quistis said finally, looking away from him. "I wasn't thinking about that. I just…couldn't let them shoot you."

There was a lump in his throat so fucking thick he could barely speak around it, and the smirk his lips tried to spread in stretched like brittle old rubber band, hurting. "Why, Instructor, it almost sounds like you like me."

"I do, Seifer," she replied quietly. "You know that."

He let his skull bang back against the headboard, his chest tight and his pulse in his ears roaring staccato artillery cracks that made him just want to close his eyes and let go of everything, just fucking drift in Time Compression nothingness without his mother or his Posse or even this woman who couldn't feel the same way about him that he felt about her. He didn't want to dream or even fucking _think_, because it all hurt like a motherfucker, it all made him want to scream and rage and break a hole in this world that had done nothing but fuck him over these past few years. And shivering fucking pussy that he had become, he wanted her to hold him while he did not dream or think, while he drifted in this Time Compression abyss empty as his chest, because he was so goddamned _fucking _pathetic, even pity from Quistis Trepe was better than nothing.

He smiled that tight little fucking smile again as she set her head back down on his shoulder. "You like me. You don't love me."

She went spring-coiled tense against him. "Seifer-"

"Don't worry about it, Instructor. Matron couldn't do it either, and she was a lot better person than all of us. Well, before that whore took over, of course."

"I don't know how I feel," Quistis whispered, turning her face into the side of his neck. "Seifer, I-I stepped in front of you because…" She huffed a sigh that rippled down through her entire body. "I didn't know they were loaded with riot rounds. I thought they were going to kill you. And I couldn't live with that. But I can't…I don't want to feel that way about you." She forced her last sentence out like it was shrapnel, like she'd swallowed something fucking rotten and needed to get it the hell out, and he rolled up onto his side so he could see her face. "I don't even understand why you love me. When we were kids, I was the one no one wanted. And it's…difficult for me to reconcile that with the fact that you care for me. Matron and Cid gave me up, and things didn't work out with my foster family because they didn't want me. I went to Garden shortly after because there was no where else for me to go. Squall just confirmed every suspicion they planted in me. And I'm…" She was back to rubbing the bridge of her nose, chafing the skin there until he pulled her fingers away and kept them wrapped in his own, up against his chest. "I'm afraid you'll see whatever it is they did," Quistis finished quietly, looking away from him.

"Pubes is a fucking idiot," he snapped. "And so is anyone else who didn't want you. You think I fall in love with just anyone, Trepe?"

"Outside of your own reflection? No, I imagine not."

"You're real fuckin' funny, Instructor." He bent down and kissed the little flicker of smile that made its way across her lips, and he could feel a little answering smile of his own, pushing through all his layers and layers of grief, and this time-

It didn't hurt.

He kissed her again for a long, long time, her hands knotted up in the collar of his shirt and his fingers tangled in her hair, and he wasn't coming up for fucking air if it killed him. Who gave a damn if she didn't love him? Who gave two fucking shits if this was just a woman pressing herself up against him in the dark because she didn't want to be alone anymore, because she didn't want to remember batlefield death reek and rope snarls of coiled-up guts, dangling from her comrades-

_He _gave two fucking shits.

He was a _fucking _woman.

Seifer pulled away with one hand twisted up in the hair at the nape of his neck, scowling.

"Seifer."

Those eyes were too fucking blue-they always had been, big and long-lashed and pulling him down like a fucking riptide sucking him under, and he rolled onto his back to glare sulkily at the ceiling before the lump in his throat could became something monumentally stupid on his lips. He felt her hand come up to skate hesitantly along his arm, grazing up his elbow all the way to his shoulder, until he wanted to bark for her to take it the fuck off if she didn't want it broken.

But Seifer Almasy was nothing more than a neutered little bitch now, and breaking Quistis Trepe's hand was about as out of reach for him as that white horse and the fucking sunset he was supposed to ride off into, princess in tow.

"You couldn't live with me being killed," he said thickly-he wondered briefly if you could kick yourself in your own balls, because there was that pansy tremor back in his voice, and he hoped to fucking _Hyne _she didn't notice it-and in the dark beside him, Quistis took her hand slowly from his shoulder and dropped it awkwardly to the stretch of mattress between them.

It felt like a thousand fucking miles. She was looking away again, in time to miss the fist clench that crumpled the sheets in his fingers like he wanted to tear right fucking through them, like his mother's pretty whore throat, thrown back above him and wrapped in the bled-pale striations of his stranglehold.

"But you don't fucking love me. You never did want to play with the broken toy, did you, _Instructor_?" he sneered. "You were always too good for the shit that all of the rest of us had used up and ruined."

"It isn't like that," she said quietly, and he could hear just weariness in her voice now, nothing sharp or prickling or accusatory even though he'd been trying to bait her, even though he'd wanted her to snap back, because then at least he could have a focal point for all this bitter fucking anger inside him.

He wanted Instructor Trepe frowning at him from the front of her classroom, because maybe it wasn't that star-eyed fucking worship she kept lavishing on that undeserving moron three desks over, but at least she was _paying attention to him_.

At least she wasn't looking away from him in a shadow-painted room so quiet it became an entire fucking ocean in his ears.

"Seifer, it's not that I don't-" She stopped herself, the skin between her eyebrows puckering up in the thin slits of moonlight filtered through meticulously-dusted blinds. "I just…Selphie and Irvine were in love. And Squall and Rinoa-"

"Yeah; we've already been over this, Trepe. You can't make yourself stop giving a fuck just because bad shit happens," Seifer hissed, crossing both arms and glaring at the far wall like it had personally offended him. "You can't be a fucking coward your whole life."

"It _isn't_-" she began angrily, and then stopped again, with his fingers against her lips this time, and maybe all his slit-eyed authority had just gone tits up, but he couldn't halt the softening he could feel around his tight-pinched mouth with her staring up at him like that, because Trepe had her whole fucking heart in those eyes, and it didn't match her tone at all.

"Yeah it is. That why you're such an overachiever, Quistis? Because Matron and Cid gave you up to some dick foster family who decided you weren't good enough for them? Because you had a shitty childhood where no one loved you, so you buried yourself in your fucking books and your classes because you figured if you were perfect, maybe someone would finally want you?"

He was really fucking hoping that sudden glaze across her eyes was just moonlight reflecting off them, because if he'd just made her cry, he'd punch himself in the dick.

"We _did _love you, you fucking idiot. Matron cried for two days straight after you left, you know that? And Wuss and the cowboy and Messenger Girl, even frigid fucking little Pubes-they all loved you. So did I. After you left I was the only one left, and I stomped around for fucking weeks, breaking shit and pulling up all Matron's flowers, and you know why? Because I was pissed, Trepe. Because I fucking _missed you_. I missed all of you, and when I got to Garden, none of you even remembered me-" He had to pause for a moment, pulling the fragments of his voice back together while she stared at him. "I didn't love you the same way back then I do now, but I used to make up all this stupid shit in my head-you were always the bossy bitch of a princess, and I rescued you even when you didn't want me to, and I used to think we'd get married or something, because that's what the knight's supposed to do with the princess. It was just a bunch of stupid fucking kid shit, but it made me happy. And even when I was way too old for that fucking shit, sometimes I'd lay awake thinking about it all, remembering what it used to be like with Wuss in the next bed over snoring so loudly I couldn't sleep, fighting with Leonhart because he looked at me wrong or some stupid shit like that, breaking your dolls-because even though you bossed me around and Pubes was a fucking moron, and Wuss made me want to claw his little crybaby eyes out of his head-my childhood was the happiest fucking part of my whole life. And you know-I didn't follow her in the beginning because she'd mind fucked me. Back in Timber, I went just because she was my mother, and because I was pissed at the rest of you, and part of me wanted you all to feel like I did back in that fucking orphange when there was no one left but just me and Matron and Cid. I wanted to fucking hurt all of you."

He did glance over at her now, forcing his eyes around to that pale beautiful face, wide-eyed in the dark. "I spilled _my _fucking guts, Trepe. And I want to know-do you really not love me, or are you just a fucking coward?"

* * *

><p>She laid there in the dark for a long time, thinking about it.<p>

Boy Seifer on the beach re-building her sandcastles as she smeared sand-clotted tears from both eyes, his tone strident and mocking and horrible, his fingers where they bumped into hers gentle-

Bleach-flash of pretty madmen slave boy smiling up from a parade float beside his mother-

Warrior's calluses like sandpaper knurls of scar tissue, pressed tight against hers on a beach that bloomed with firework sprays of sunset overhead-

Hyperion reaching for her throat, rust-flaking blood raining little showers of brick-brown ash up into her face-

And those cable-corded arms bunched tightly up beside her on the bed now, holding her together when the only thing she could see-when the only thing she would _ever_ see-was the maw-gape of Selphie Tilmitt's chest, smiling its lipless autopsy incision up at her. Seifer Almasy, her problem student with the eyes that made her feel like commerce, like front window display in a butcher's shop, Seifer Almasy the little shrieking boy tearing up and down past the front porch where she was trying to read-

Seifer Almasy, carrying around all the festering poison that woman had pumped him full of, and still finding something inside of himself undamaged enough to care about her. Seifer Almasy, jagged and brittle and fractured inside, putting the pieces of Quistis Trepe back together.

Quistis closed her eyes.

She'd already known the truth, for a long time now. Maybe she had shoved it down deep, maybe she had hidden it behind the stratums of self-preservation she wrapped herself in, cold-winter like the eyes of the woman who had stolen Matron's face-

But it did not make all the ugly, skittering things just underneath the surface of Quistis Trepe go away. It painted wounds over with anesthesia that wore off at night while she lay blinking up at her ceiling, watching stumps of spurting neck column spray arterial red, over and over again. It let her shut out Selphie's death and Zell's face in that hematic smear of tank fluid long enough for her to function, for SeeD Trepe to don her mask and perform her duties with robotic precision-

But it did not let her _forget_. It did not keep her from seeing Kiros Seagill hunched sobbing over his friend's limp unmoving body like he did not know how to go on.

And it could not let her pretend forever that she did not love Seifer.

It was still the hardest thing she'd ever had to say, and from her foster mother's bland disinterested face she heard Squall's voice, telling her to talk to a wall. She could see them all, circling inside her head, whispering behind splays of palms open like shields across mouths that hissed her name like it was a bad taste-

She could still feel her cheeks burning.

She kept her eyes closed as she forced the words out between her lips. "Yes. I do. I love you."

"You do?" she could hear the surprise in his voice, and it opened up a hollow void insider her chest, because it was the disbelieving tone of someone who did not quite know how to accept this sort of truth, and it reminded Quistis of the voice inside her head.

"Are you sure?" Seifer demanded, and lying beside this man who used to be her enemy, this man with the experienced warrior's hands that became shyly hesitant brushes of testing-the-waters uncertainty every time he touched her, she suddenly, for the first time in a long time, felt like laughing.

She did not; instead she linked her fingers around behind his neck, and pulled his face down to hers.

She could feel his heartbeat pick up against hers, thumping solidly echoing between them.

"Unfortunately," Quistis murmured, and she felt him scowl against her lips.

"What do you mean, 'unfortunately,' Instructor?"

"I mean you are most oftentimes an incredibly large pain in my ass," she said wryly.

He looked down at her with a smile. "That's the worst word you've ever said, isn't it?"

"No; I can assure you I uttered much worse ones while you were a daily part of my classroom."

He pulled her down beside him, leaving his hand tangled in her hair and his cheek pressed to hers, and for a long, long time they said nothing, and Quistis found herself concentrating on the steady reassuring thrum of his heartbeat, loud in the silence.

She might not get to hear it for much longer.

She had to shake the thought from her head before it could swell, before it could become the only thing she could see in this cream-painted constellation of popcorn ceiling above her, and she felt his fingers stroke down over the side of her head, and down onto her cheek.

"Tell me something you remember about her. Something that was good. Your favorite memory of Matron." She let her head slide down onto his shoulder, and tilted her gaze to look up at him, stretching up a hand for the piece of hair that fell down over his right eye.

She watched his throat work like he'd swallowed something uncomfortably large.

He started off in a rush, like something had broken inside of him and was spilling free, and Quistis kept her hand on his cheek, brushing her fingertips over the sandpaper prickle of stubble there.

"You tell Wuss this and I swear to Hyne-" He did not finish his threat, but it made her smile softly into his neck anyway, and his mouth lost its scowl when he glanced down at her. "Sometimes Matron let me help when she worked in her garden. She taught me the names of the flowers she planted and assigned me one she said was mine for me to take care of, so when none of the rest of you were paying attention-sometimes after everyone was already asleep-I used to sneak outside and water it and shit, dump fertilizer on it. I used to pretend it was magic, that I was going to need it to wake up a princess under a spell or something fucking stupid like that. She never even laughed at me when I told her; she just smiled and said it was our secret, and she hoped one day I found a princess who deserved me. She-" He had to clear his throat, and Quistis paused with her fingers on the line of his jaw, her chest going tight.

In the blind-filtered fingers of moonlight that slanted silver-glistening jail bars across his face, she could see him blink suddenly, his jaw underneath her hand going tense.

"Seifer," she said softly, but he wasn't looking at her anymore.

"I didn't get to say good-bye to any of them. Not fucking Matron or Raij or Fu-they're all just fucking gone."

She thought of Selphie bleeding out beneath her hands, and Irvine's shoulder-heaves of broken sobs. "That's what happens to people like us; the people we love get their legs shot out from underneath them and their chests ripped open and their heads cut off, and there's nothing we can do about it. There isn't any time to tell them good-bye," Quistis said quietly. She slid her head back down from its tilt, so she did not have to look at him this time. "Say good-bye to me, Seifer, in case you don't get the chance to later."

"_No,_" he snarled. "I don't need to."

_You might,_ she thought, but she did not say it aloud, because his arm around her shoulders had gone bruising tight, and in that shadowed room she could almost, for a moment, pretend he might never need to. She could curl up beside him in the dark with his lips in her hair and her hand on his chest and she could tell herself, for a while at least, that this moment would go on for an eternity, that there was nothing left of the part of Quistis Trepe that heard music note tinkles of brass pinging off metal beneath her feet every time she tried to sleep, that pictured bubbling trachea gapes of final desperate gasps for air-

These were the only things that existed:

Seifer's hard-muscled arm beneath her shoulders, and his breath like a whisper against her hair. His hand with its sandpaper knurls of warrior's callus, finding hers on the mattress between them.

And she suddenly, unbearably understood why the barrier she had built one slow meticulous brick at a time had tried to wall off what she felt for him, had attempted to assemble its protective carapace layer around her heart before anything harmful could be let in.

She curled her palm on his chest into a fist, gathering up a handful of shirt fabric.

She could not lose him, and sudden clawing panic ripped an open bleeding wound inside her chest, slow-leak fatal. She had wanted him to get in his farewells before it was too late, and she could not even force the words past her own lips; they hung up in her throat, knife-edge sharp, and when she tried to speak they ripped her throat like claws.

So she said nothing. She let herself go to sleep believing this was how her world would end, coiled up next to him in the dark with his heart a nervous bird-flutter beneath her hand-

Her last sight of him would be this right here, right now, this shadowed half-profile she could only sort of see out of the corner of one eye.

She did not let herself think about the fact that her last image of him, this man who used to be a small blonde-haired child who broke her dolls and stole her cookies-

It would most likely be battlefield snapshot, forever preserving the sight of him on his knees coughing up clots of shrapnel-chewed lungs. He'd die in her arms if they were both lucky, alone if they were not, and it would be the happiest ending either of them could hope for.

And for a long time, she wondered if Matron and Cid had truly understood what they had inflicted upon them all, the Liberi Fatali with their too-short childhoods and their brutal death brushes and crushing losses of friends and family and lovers.

In her dreams that night, they understood and they did not care, and she watched from a splintered front porch swing as together they drowned each and every one of all the people she had cautiously let herself love.

Ellone in a loose-limbed deadman's float beside Irvine and Zell and Squall, all neatly lined up in a row across which Selphie lay, her rodent-eaten corpse's limbs crossed serenely over the bone-gleam of peeled-back ribcage, showing Quistis her still-beating heart.

Rinoa struggling and thrashing and coughing beneath their hands, and Matron's calm patient face smiling above her.

And Seifer's eyes, blinking blood-streaked accusations up at her from beneath the spray of fist-clutched hair Matron wound her fingers through, his severed blinking head swinging playfully in her free hand.

* * *

><p>This is the story that breaks the world:<p>

It starts as all newscasts do, in a close-up of theater makeup circles of clown-bright blush and stiff-sprayed hair, impervious to the strongest of wind blasts. There is a flicker of tongue along triple-layered lipstick and a discreet palm-muffled cough that shows bleached-bright teeth, toothpaste commercial ready.

There is no corresponding flash of bleached-bright teeth, because tonight's story is a somber one, and the only appropriate smile is a close-lipped grave thing that does not reach the eyes.

There is a heartbeat tap of papers being shuffled together, and another discreet hack of throat-clear.

And this is the story that goes out all across the world, that halts parents and children alike, that brings the world to a screeching halt for three long minutes of hollowly echoing astonishment in the hearts of everyone watching.

There is no one doing anything more important than this story, right now.

"We bring you this breaking news story tonight from a source who has requested they remain anonymous, for their own safety." There is a prayer knot of folded-together hands on a desk liberally sprinkled with the outlines of other stories that do not matter anymore. "Esteemed Dr. Odine of Esthar, many of whom you may remember as the scientist behind groundbreaking research into both the Lunar Cry and the sorceress bloodline has been called in for questioning by Esthar's Ethics Committee under suspicion of using children for an experimental procedure that Dr. Odine claims has isolated the sorceress gene, and allowed him to implant it in both already living specimens, and test tube creations he is in the process of growing inside his lab."

Pale-powdered skin goes even whiter underneath camera-ready cosmetics layer. "This would create a veritable sorceress army with the power-if Dr. Odine is to be believed-a hundred times that of the sorceress Edea. Funding for this project has been traced back by our sources to President Laguna himself, and Balamb Garden has freely offered the sorceress Rinoa for study in this experimental procedure. We will continue to update you on this story as information becomes available to us. I'm Andrea Lannick, and this is A71 News."

In the hearts of thousands upon millions of beings across the globe, there is a slowly revolving fist, pulping everything.

And an hour later, like sharks circling the water just waiting for an opportunity, Galbadia and Trabia officially declare war on Esthar.


	24. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty Two**

Presidential Palace

Esthar

For the three eternal minutes the newscast dragged on, he was not thinking about Rinoa or his unborn child.

For once.

He was staring at his father, and his bleached-bone pale face.

Across the desk that separated them like the chasm in Squall's heart, Laguna Loire had gone very still and white and silent, his heart in his throat beating visibly in his neck.

Squall watched it pound like a hammer, broken metronome unsteady.

He sat just as still, father and son mannequins gaping with blank bleak astonishment at each other across this desk that was the closest he was willing to get to this man who had left him behind, and as sight and sound and comprehension began to trickle back into his head, Squall remembered them.

They smacked him with the tooth-shatter brutality of a prize fighter's round-closing upper cut, and the only thing he could wonder sitting there with his hands clenched in fists on his thighs, was how he could have forgotten them, for even a moment.

"Well, we know where all that money was going now," Kiros muttered, and Squall had never heard his voice go so tight before, wound up like the coil of whip leather that was the only warning of Quistis' next fatally accurate strike.

"That's where she is," he hissed between his teeth, and somehow, someway, Lionheart was suddenly in his hand. "Odine-" He could barely _breathe _through this heavy suffocating hand-press of sudden realization, bearing down on his chest like the finger flick of Hyne himself, thumping him directly in the heart. His chest telescoped around his lungs, and he had to grip that polished oval of reflective desk surface with one hand now, leaning on it as he tried to discover how to live with this new knowledge that bloomed tiny threads of venom that reached down like fingers for his heart.

"_Odine has her_."

Kiros frowned. "Yeah, and whoever's orchestrating all of this knows you're going to go rushing right in there to save her. It's a trap, Squall."

Laguna across from him looked very old, and very frail. "Squall, I understand-"

"You _don't understand_!" He had never heard his voice sound like this before, like someone had sanded it down flat and forgotten to smooth out all the rough edges. "Rinoa's _pregnant_."

Laguna reeled like Squall had slapped him, and now his father's hands came up to grip that polished oval as well, and little bone-snap pops of yielding wood were suddenly the only sounds in the entire office.

It didn't matter if it was a trap. It didn't matter if the entire Galbadian army was waiting for him-it didn't matter if all those blank flat stares of medication-glossed children's eyes were waiting for him beyond those eerie backlit tanks with the power of a hundred-a _thousand_-Ultimecias.

Odine was experimenting on her. Odine that pretentious know-it-all asshole, Odine that _prick_-he was going to tear him apart with his bare hands. He was going to dismember him piece by piece by piece until the rage that smoked in his heart and gathered in a low roll of thunder between his ears went away, until he had Rinoa safe in his arms, until he had his _child _safe and alive and undamaged in his arms.

Kiros sat back in his chair with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. "We're gonna' have to get in fast, then, if we want to get her out, and get the hell out just as quickly. Galbadia's probably already got troops positioned just outside the city, knowing them." He was looking at Laguna, stone-cold steady, and his father-

His father was nodding, very slowly and carefully and resignedly, a head bobbing short cautious jerks of understanding nod in a loop of hangman's noose. His pale, pale face and those eyes Squall had inherited, those eyes underneath loose strands of gray-shot brown-

He stood there memorizing them all, his finger joints creaking loud pyrotechnics explosions in the silence.

There were tears squeezing out between his lashes as he stared down at this man who had never been there for him, this man who had already lost one friend and was offering up another, and the 'thank you' in his throat stalled on his tongue-

He could only stand there, blankly staring, for a moment as Kiros rose with a gunshot crack of his neck, clapping him on the shoulder.

He could only stand there staring and blinking and blinking and staring, hurt-child quiver of jaw tremble and joint-pop of tightening knuckles-that was all he was now, shivering six-year-old child standing on a porch stoop in the rain wondering why his father hadn't wanted him, and when Cid and Matron would come to the same decision. Why why why why _why_-it was the same question six-year-old Squall asked himself everyday-why the hell hadn't his father come for him yet, why the _hell _had he dropped him off on this sagging salt-stained porch stoop in the first place-

He was still trying to scrape that 'thank you' up out of his throat.

Laguna had Kiros by the forearm, a full fist-squeeze clench his friend returned with a half-smile Squall's father did not mirror, and that indefatigable love that is sometimes a physical presence between crisis-torn family members, another person in the room-

Squall could feel it between them, pressing on his throat. Twenty years between them, two decades of camaraderie, of laughter and late nights of beer-slurred confessions over fanned-out decks of playing cards-

And Laguna would throw it all away for his ass of a son, his ungrateful sonofabitching _son _who couldn't tamp down on the hate in his heart, who couldn't forgive a decades-old misunderstanding, who could not let himself believe, for even a moment, that this man, this white-bleached politician's smile and corner crinkle of gracefully aging crow's feet, was at all genuine.

_"One day your dad's gonna' be where Ward was, and you're gonna' sit there holding him in your arms, and you're gonna' realize you didn't have enough time with him. And you're gonna' regret it." _

He pulled his feet together into perfectly-aligned at rest, sliding Lionheart back into its sheath.

"Make sure he comes back, Kiros." Somewhere beyond the roaring in his ears, he could hear Laguna speaking to Kiros in a voice as tight as Squall's hand and jaw, wavering toward a tremor he had to cough out of his next sentence.

"Got it, _sir_." The faintly sarcastic emphasis Kiros put on this title brought a thin-stretched smile to Laguna's lips, fragile as the hope in Squall's aching chest.

He did not need to hack a wet cough of throat-clear into his hand, even though he could barely speak; somehow everything inside the room-drum roll finger tap of rain on the window and white noise hiss of belt-clipped radios spitting updates and commands and relieved all-clears-somehow it all shrank away to nothing as he forced his lips open around something he had always sworn he would never utter. "I'll make sure _he _comes back…dad."

And there was only that metronomic steadiness of finger tap rainstorm and the blood-surge of his heart in his ears, now.

And then Laguna's arms were around him before he could stop them, before he could even decide if he _wanted _to stop them, and he stood there with his own arms hanging nerveless wood-block numb down both sides, his heart hammering in his chest.

His dad smelled like aftershave.

He remembered Cid in that smudged oval of bathroom mirror, getting ready for the day: a subtle splash of cologne spray, just thick enough, and a softly encouraging smile for the boy watching him from the hallway, and he could remember standing there, staring up at this man who tried to be his father but was not, at this man with his button-strain of little rounding paunch, filling out his shirt, and he could remember wondering what his real father smelled like, what he ate and wore and got up each morning for-

And he had never known.

And not knowing had left a fist-sized hole in his chest-more than a fist-sized hole, an entire planetary gape of burned-out star, eating slowly away at Squall Leonhart, until each straining cross block throwing sparks from Hyperion was a strike at his absent father, until each trickle of blood his knuckles ripped from Seifer's smirking asshole lips was a direct shot at his father, at this man before him who had let him languish for years and years and years in a place where people loved him because they had to, this man who had let him grow up into a person who had to bury friends before they were ready, before _he _was ready-

He could see Kiros smiling at him over Laguna's shoulder, and then something seized him, something had him by the throat, and he had his face buried in his father's chest and both arms around his shoulders, and he wanted to stand there pounding this man's chest, screaming wordless gut-heave sobs of accusations until Laguna Loire could put to rest every endless echoing _why _inside Squall Leonhart.

But he didn't have time.

Laguna let him go when he pulled away, and Squall saw one hand go up to surreptitiously wipe his eyes.

Kiros behind him was still smiling, and that hand clap of shoulder-squeeze that jumped Laguna forward a few stuttering steps came down again. "Don't worry, Loire; I'm bringing him back. You've got a grandkid coming, old man. Should I call you 'Pops' or 'Gee Gaw'?"

Laguna swatted at him as he ducked past, missing. "You don't get to call me either if my son's not in one single piece when you bring him back; I'm gonna' pull your lips around your head and tie 'em around your neck, just like I'm going to do to that Dincht kid if he doesn't stop making eyes at Ellone."

Kiros snapped off a short arc of a salute, and then turned to usher Squall toward the door. "Let's go. We'll pick up your friends on the way out the door-get that Almasy kid; guy's a nut job. We're going to need that right now."

* * *

><p>She is fairly certain she's been lying here forever.<p>

Lucidity has been beyond her grasp for a long time, but now suddenly something slides itself down across her eyes, and the world goes stark Technicolor blaze in front of her.

And suddenly she can see again.

Suddenly she can hear again.

But she is not doing it with her own eyes, and she is not doing it with her own ears.

"Hello."

This is not her voice, this sub vocal twitch of mummified tongue scrape in her mouth, dehydration shriveled.

"Hellohellohellohello!"

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see a twitch of elaborately ridiculous collar, shifting toward her.

There is something else shifting, something inside of her, some well-depth cesspit of necrosis-rot chewing into her soul. It's where the voice is coming from, and now something is rotating rolling twisting inside of her, and underneath her skin there is a hive-buzz of vibration like finger-plucked instrument string, throbbing inside her pores.

The restraints that pin her wrists to cold sterile exam table give with rips like fang-savaged tendon, unraveling into useless meat-wads of arterial-sprayed muscle strands.

His head twists all the way around toward her. "Vat is this-"

"HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO REMEMBER ME REMEMBER ME?" She's not trying to say this-it is just coming out, and she sits up with a smile on her face she cannot remember putting there, and the straps around her ankles snap with wet squelches of knife-stuck abdominal wound.

She swings her legs over the side of the table.

That twitch of elaborately ridiculous collar has become a looming rainbow spray in front of this vision that doesn't belong to her anymore.

"Vat are you doing-"

Her hand comes up, and she has not made it do this either.

It's around his throat, pushing through looming rainbow spray of elaborately ridiculous collar.

"Burn the children. BURN THE CHILDREN I MUST BURN THE CHILDREN THEY'RE GOING TO KILL ME DID YOU KNOW THAT RINOA-"

His protest is a damp gurgle of cut-off complaint, and underneath her hand his throat is earthworm moist, and she cocks her head to see it better, to better calculate the precise angle she must exert her pressure at, and now there's a loud tree-branch crack and between her fingers his head dangles dead maggot flaccid-

His tongue is a bloated worm wriggle between his lips, contusion purple.

She lets him slide from her hand as her child inside her begins to kick.

* * *

><p>He was watching the faint dawn-finger of faded pink creeping over distant skyscraper horizon line when the first explosion shook the Palace beneath him, and heaved Irvine staggering backward onto his bed.<p>

He slid off it onto his knees, and stayed there.

The night outside lit up like a long ago beach, except these teeth-rattle booms of detonation crumpled the outer half of that distant skyscraper horizon in a dust-ripple of flying debris, and brought it shuddering down onto ant-dots of sidewalk-strolling pedestrians.

He could hear tiny echoing shrieks of faroff screams, cut short.

Zell and Seifer stopped arguing over the cards spread out between them on Irvine's bed.

Quistis slumped at his writing desk with her cheek in her hand sat abruptly upright, blinking boredom glaze from her eyes.

"Fuck me-"

Another explosion cut Almasy off like those screams far below, smothered between wreckage-buckled sidewalks and thousand-pound slag piles of splintered furniture and blown-apart foundation seams, poking up like teeth-slants of crooked gravestones.

Through the window he could see sleek black lines of hand-polished military chopper streak past.

G. Garden; he recognized the insignia-hell, he'd probably hand-polished the damn thing himself, for various minor infractions committed throughout his years at Galbadia Garden.

There was nothing but numbness inside his chest as he watched it come into a hover, as he watched tiny squirming fingers of cable-thin rope uncoil from wide-flung doors, birthing more ant-dots of black-clad soldiers. Zell lurched upward from the bed like a man pulling himself from the grave, newborn-limb wobbly.

Almasy was still sitting there, rifling cards through his fingers with that frown between his eyebrows that was either a sign of distress at the shitstorm unfolding outside their window or just his usual expression-Irvine was never quite sure. He always looked vaguely displeased with something.

Irvine watched his eyes flicker toward Quistis white-faced in that desk chair, and the precise moment she flicked a slanting distracted glance toward him was when Irvine saw his face change, and that faint premature age line of displeasure became something deeper.

Resignation. That was what Almasy had written all over his face, because sometime in the next minute or hour or day, they'd deploy out into that teeming writhing battlefield dodging falling buildings and sound barrier snaps of rifles that might kill them, and somewhere in the middle of it all would be Quistis, Quistis who he loved, perhaps dragging blown-off stumps of trailing leg stubs behind her, trying to breathe through a shot-up lung.

He'd felt the same damn thing every time Selphie went out into the field, and the one time he had not been afraid for her, the one time he had not even considered the possibility of life without her-

That was when she'd been taken from him. You could just never predict that sorta' shit, you know? So he got the look on Almasy's face; he could even predict the slow revolution of palm twist snarling all his guts together, and the rat-gnaw of icy spreading horror at the base of his spine. Been there himself, a time or two. And there wasn't a damn thing he could say to make it better, because you didn't fix that-you didn't make it ok that you might have to watch a curve of mouth you'd kissed hack up clots of internal bleed-out, and there wasn't a Hyne-damned thing he could say or do or think that would bring Almasy to the realization that watching Quistis bleed to death in his arms was not the end of his life, even if it felt like it.

He was barely hanging on himself, some days. And maybe he was still kicking, maybe he was slowly inch by inch healing that suppurated wound she'd left behind, but there was a part of him that had gone necrosis-dead, and he knew he wouldn't ever be getting it back. Maybe you could switch the light back on once you replaced the bulb, except his whole Hyne-damned wiring had been yanked out of the ceiling, leaving behind a hole he'd never stop feeling.

Quistis was standing. Irvine still wasn't sure he could.

"The military's going to need anyone with training out there," she said quietly.

Seifer walked a card across his knuckles, not looking at her.

Zell was still gaping drop-jawed out the window, his hands in fists at his sides.

"Well then." Irvine adjusted his hat, and slowly, one stiff-screaming muscle ligament at a time, he unfolded all six feet of him into a loose informal at ease that mirrored the stance Quistis had automatically gone into across from him. "Gentleman. Lady. Dincht." He tipped his hat, very carefully. The implied insult did not even stir his friend from the window. "Let's give 'em some hell, shall we?"

There was none of Almasy's usual battle lust in his eyes or on his face; he was still darting those little sidelong looks at Quistis, and the pinch of his mouth suggested he was struggling not to throw up all over Irvine's floor.

"Yeah," Zell said roughly, and out of the corner of his eye, Irvine could see him looking at Seifer too.

Almasy abruptly threw down the card he was holding, straightening up into a back arch that popped his spine, that old classroom-smirk of disruptive asshole back on his face, stale as the hot dog Dincht probably had smuggled in his pocket. His lips peeled off his teeth in something that reminded Irvine of that parade, so very long ago.

He shook the quiver from his hands, and grabbed Exeter where it leaned against the wall beside his bed. "Everyone come back with their asses in one piece, got it? 'Specially you, sweetheart." He winked at Quistis, and the scowl this brought to Seifer's face momentarily wiped every fear from his pale-bleached face.

The brief strained smile it pulled from her was worth whatever horrendous death Almasy was plotting in his head.

Zell and Almasy reached the door first, spilling over into the hallway beyond; Irvine stopped Quistis with a hand on her arm, and on his face he could feel something like a smile, pulled-tight and weary, the only encouragement he could offer her. "Be careful out there, will ya', Quisty? Someone's gotta' keep that jerk in check." He shifted Exeter on his shoulder, transferring it out of the collarbone hollow where the sights kept digging in, and brought his free hand up in a shoulder squeeze that tilted her lips back up, just slightly.

Didn't matter if she was careful-hell, it didn't matter if a hundred Seifer Almasys swinging two-handed sythe blows of mirror-image Hyperion copies formed a closed circle of defensive ring she couldn't even see past-

Sometimes, the bullet got there anyway. Sometimes you slipped in blood or went down under a hailstorm of gunfire you hadn't even seen coming, and the circle collapsed, folded inward, and there was its center naked and open and vulnerable, torn to grub-squirm pieces of bullet riddled body parts, twitching out final shudders of reflex tic.

That was what he saw on her face.

Maybe she hadn't given up, maybe Quistis Trepe with the cold-steel eyes and the rigid-locked spine, marching ahead of him across folds of snow-covered hilltop shouting orders-maybe that Quistis was still alive and kicking-

But she was beyond strategizing triumph scenarios that ended in grateful collapses into waiting beds with shitmud-caked boots still dangling over sides of blood-rumpled covers: she was simply going to take as many of them down with her as she could.

That was the extent of the hope he could see in her eyes.

Irvine pulled her into a one-armed embrace he used to crush her up against his chest as hard as he could. He waited for her to relax out of the reflexive clench her body had gone into, and his nose where he buried it in her hair smelled vanilla.

That was what he was going to remember, then: not Quistis Trepe, SeeD Trepe choking on fragments of bullet-splintered trachea, each moist splash of cough slapping dull meat-thuds of severed dangling legs against the blood-soaked ground underneath her, but pretty blue-eyed Quisty, who smelled like vanilla, who touched his hand when missing Selphie squeezed every ounce of breath from his lungs-

Who built sandcastles along the shoreline and braided daisy chains for Squall to wear like crowns, and punched Seifer in the nose when he bullied Zell.

He had to blink tears out of his eyes when he let her go. He was smiling down at her, trying for just that one final Casanova slow-spread of lip flicker that had conquered so many hearts, because that was the way Irvine wanted Quistis to remember him. Her harmless flirt of a friend, winking at her across the cafeteria, serenading her with purse-lipped shrills of appreciative wolf whistle, and not some guy on a battlefield with his brain poking up through his skull. Not some mud-layered soldier lying in his own filth, scrabbling last reflexive seizures of death twitch like he could dig through the shit and mud and cauterized skin folds of missing limbs to some place else, some place far away where he was not dying, where Selphie was alive and every person he had ever loved was safe.

No place like that, though, was there?

"I love you, Quisty. Know that, don't you?"

She touched his cheek, very softly. Her toes beneath her went to en pointe, putting her high enough to kiss his cheek. "I know. Be careful out there."

"I ain't worried about dyin'," he said quietly. "I figure…least I'll get to see her again, y'know?"

Her eyes looked very old and very sad as she stepped back from him. "I hope you do. But not for a long time, Irvine. She would want you to live a long, happy life, even if it wasn't with her."

He looked over her shoulder toward the window, toward bleak black boil of rubble cloud and distant paint-smudge smears of red, staining the damp black snake of the road below.

Little cinders of rapid-fire muzzle flare smeared the night orange.

Have to see about that, wouldn't they?

* * *

><p>She is still walking without really understanding how she is using her legs. They're trembling underneath her, she thinks-or maybe they're not; everything is string-jointed disconnected, and she's thinking about puppets and little blonde boys when she starts to giggle.<p>

Little green-eyed blonde boys with oiled-wood hinges of jaw line, clacking open and shut and open and shut, every time she twitches her fingers.

The hallway beyond is a long stark puddle of burned-out fluorescent, flickering on and off flares of random short-out that paint her world actinic medicinal white and midnight bruise. Her feet are bare; she didn't notice that before. They scrape up flakes of red-rust blood that shift like bleeding fireflies around her; she thinks they look like petals swirling in a meadow.

She's not sure where that thought came from, either.

There is a leg underneath her foot, butcher house floppy.

She saw a pig in a butcher house once, it's eyes staring dazed uncomprehending pleas at her, and in the background she heard the start-up snarl of electronic bone-saw, making its own porcine squeal as it bit down through layers of farm-fattened haunch into femur bone that cracked like a twig.

The leg is attached to a body leaking red from its chest.

Her hands are the same color.

Interesting.

There is another body beyond the first, and it stares up at her like the pig, just as uncomprehending, and when she sees a quick little hitch of the chest like the breath has suddenly been hastily stifled so she won't notice it, Rinoa brings her heel down.

It's a fascinating process, stomping a human to death. First there's a loud socket-pop of separating spinal cord, all the way down at the back of the neck-that's what she notices first. Then a dry little _hrk hrk hrk _that is a blood-bubble of internal damage in the throat itself-that's the body still trying to bring in oxygen, still not quite ready to accept that there's a hole in its trachea that's not going to let anything stay.

The eyes roll like thumb-flicked scatters of children's toys.

And then there is the smell-bowel-reek of systematic shut-down, trying to keep all the important parts functioning long enough to get help. She sees an oil stain of brown and crimson fanning out into a wide puddle beneath this body that is now really just a useless wad of meat, and she steps over it looking down at her hands.

They're a little pretty, she thinks, turning them over in the light that flicks on for a moment before going out again.

They're the color of a sunset-stained meadow.

There's a boy waiting for her in it, and she thinks there is something familiar about the curve of shoulder joint underneath jacket sleeve-

She's rested her head there before, hasn't she?

The hallway is a flick flick flick of strobe light around her, chessboard black and white.

She can see gleaming light-scatter across tank fluid from here.

* * *

><p>She was hunched over Laguna's desk with her head in her hands when Zell stepped through the door, closing it softly behind him.<p>

He might not know a hell of a lot about women, but he could tell by the unsteady stop and start jerk of both shoulders that she was crying, and something inside of him gave a dying animal flop that felt a hell of a lot like his heart, turning over.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Uh…Ellone?"

When she came to her feet he thought it had been his voice that stirred her from that hunchback slump of defeated old woman pose, but there was no corresponding comprehension in her eyes, and when his eyes fell on the hand she held fisted in front of her, he suddenly kinda' hoped she hadn't even noticed him at all, because he was pretty sure-

Yeah, she was going to throw the lead-weight knickknack coiled up in her palm like she wanted to break it-

Zell ducked.

A high long whistle like incoming shell shatter and an arc of silver over his shoulder, and now the knickknack was just a fist-sized imprint in the wall.

She was still sobbing when she picked up something else to throw.

"Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa, Ellone." Garden didn't call him Flash for nothing-ok, nobody called him Flash; kinda' gay anyway, if you really thought about it-a flat half second brought him to her side, and another eye blink curved his hand around through a loop of cross block he executed open-handed, so that his fingers slapped Laguna's next desk ornament stinging away.

Zell grabbed her wrist. "What the hell are you doing?"

"It was _him_!" she screamed, jerking her arm away, and that pretty soft-angled face spasmed like something inside was trying to claw its way out, like these violent wrenching sobs were each miniature explosions of star births in her chest-

And the only thing he could think of was to pull her into his arms, like that was going to do anything, like she even _wanted _him to, and now those miniature explosions of star births became soundless heaves of anguish against his chest, pounding between them. He stroked her hair and whispered senseless comfort against her neck where he pressed his face, helpless.

"He-" It was a hiccup of a pronoun, jarring against him.

He swept both hands down the side of her face, tucking hair behind her ears, and there was so much raw bloodshot grief in her eyes when she looked up at him, it made Zell want to sack-punch whatever asshole had put it there. Pretty kind-faced Ellone, hanging in his arms smearing away tears he tried to help her clean off-who the motherfucking _hell _would ever want to put this look on her face?

He clenched his free hand into the fist he was going to use to tear out a new asshole, using his other to sweep back more hair that fell slanting sloppily out across her eyes. "What's going on?"

"There was another newscast, just a minute ago-" She hiccupped again, more tears spilling down her cheeks. "Derran-they just-" Another hiccup. "They just did an interview with him-they're calling him a _hero_. He was the one-he was the one passing information off to Galbadia and Trabia and the news stations and whoever else is involved in all of this-they're saying he's the one who uncovered the payments being made to Dr. Odine for the sorceress experiments. They were going to keep him anonymous, for his safety, but he wanted to 'take a stand'-_he did it_, do you get it? He had to have been the one siphoning the money off all this time; we were set up- He's the _vice president_. Uncle Laguna _trusted _him. Why would he-why would he _do _this?"

And somehow, the only thing he could think to say was this: "Another newscast?"

He tongued it up out of his throat like the words were a boulder he had to dislodge or suffocate, and his breath in his chest tightened like steel-gauntleted fingers, closing over his ribs.

Ellone slumped against him; Zell assisted her slowly back down into Laguna's chair behind his desk, and squatted in front of her with both hands on her knees.

"Here." He offered her a spray of tissue he found in a box beside the computer, white-knuckled because his hands couldn't seem to form anything that wasn't a clench of fist.

She took it without even trying to offer him a smile, and pressed the entire wad with its half-moon crescents of nail puncture to her mouth. "You didn't see the first newscast?"

"Not the first time around." He set the hand he'd used to pick up the tissue back down on her knee, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Almasy and Kinneas and Quisty and me were playin' cards when the bombs started fallin'. I was heading down here when I saw them re-run it on one of the wall screens in the hall." He took a deep breath, letting it out one slow fractured milimeter at a time. "I came to say good-bye. Just…ya' know…in case. We're all heading out to help the army."

A spasm of her palm crumpled the tissue in her fist, leaving behind half-moon crescents of nail marks to match his own.

He watched her hands sag limply flopping across both thighs, that lump of nail-shredded tissue rolling free of the fingers that snapped open around it. Zell set his palms down across hers, pushing his fingers down through hers to form a knot he held up between them, wrapping his free hand around it.

"I don't want to lose any of you," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut. "Ward-" Her shoulders shifted beneath the loose blue-green cotton folds of her unwrinkled T-shirt, and he brought his mouth down in a solid wet-smack of a kiss across her knuckles that turned Ellone's impending sob into a low choked-off sniffle.

"You won't, with me out there; promise ya'." His smile hurt his cheeks, but he kept it there just for her, rotating his thumb in slow wide circles of massage across her knuckles. "Besides, Hyne's not enough of a sick son of a bitch to let me die a virgin, right?"

Man; had he really just said that? How's about that shoe taste in his mouth, asshole?

But it brought a smile to her lips and a little spark of life to her dull-grief eyes, and it made him smile in turn, because she was so damn _pretty _even with her swollen bloodshot eyes and pert little red-stained nose, and man, this wasn't how Almasy felt looking at Quistis was it? Like she wasn't just merely _pretty _but something far, far beyond that, something that put the fist in his gut around his heart, that made him want to wake up next to her in the morning, just to see her sleep-rumpled and softly snoring beside him.

Pretty round-eyed Sis, splashing through shallow-end breakers after him.

Gently teasing Sis, digging him out from underneath the suffocating bench press weight of sand mound Seifer had built up around him.

Pretty round-eyed Sis and long-lashed doe-eyed Matron, reading in front of a fire, turning pages in books that shone gilt-edged gold around the edges, reflecting flame. He used to sit there staring up at them with his chin in his hands, his feet swinging little kicks behind him that came hair's breadths from hitting Seifer's face-which if he was honest, hadn't been entirely accidental-watching the light fracture off Quisty's hair and piece itself back together across Squall's sullen robotic face-

And, you know, maybe he knew Almasy was going to have a fistful of mud or an ant's nest or a giant bug or some other shit waiting for him when he got back to his bed, but in those moments, he'd never really cared. That familial warmth, that flame flicker of secure happy _belonging _in his chest-

It kept him awake at night, smiling at the ceiling.

He used to see his parents when he looked up at popcorn bubbles of night-stained ceiling folding into cream-painted triangles of nightlight-illuminated wall corner.

He'd been there when the soldiers came, watching from his bed.

He never told the others what he was dreaming about when he woke screaming in the night-Seifer'd just use it against him, and the others wouldn't understand; most of them barely even remembered their mothers and fathers.

Zell did; his mother was a triple-lipped grin of throat flap, slit twice because they hadn't gone deep enough the first time. And his father-

His father was a sewage-stench pile of red-splashed clothing, looking up at him through a bloody third eye stippled in freckle-dots of gunshot residue.

And Matron had taken that all away from him; Matron had one piece at a time given Zell Dincht back his childhood, with home-baked cookies and bedtime stories and hands that smelled like lavender dish soap, gently soothing him down underneath layers of sleep.

Maybe his life wasn't perfect-maybe Selphie had died and Irvine was still only a half-filled shell of the man he used to be, and maybe Quistis and Seifer and Squall and Irvine and his own foot-sucking dumbass self-

Maybe they were all headed for screaming bloody deaths that would become legends, that would immortalize Almasy's name at last just like he'd always wanted-

But he wanted to hold onto it all anyway. He wanted that stupid jerkoff to live a long life somewhere on a porch swing with Quistis beside him, nodding off on his shoulder, and he wanted Squall and Rinoa to have little constipation-face Leonhart babies he could dress in matching toddler hot dog costumes, and he wanted Kinneas-

He just wanted the guy to be happy, you know? He just wanted them _all _to be happy.

A long, long time ago on a beach with sprays of firework bursting in the sky above their heads, they had been. Shitheel Almasy and book worm Quisty, silent sulking Squall and chattering happy-go-lucky Selphie, giggling long-haired Irvine, trying to fit crayons up his nose-

They'd all known how to smile back then, hadn't they?

He stood up one slow vertebral creak at a time, stretching the kinks out of his whole body, his hands still clasped around hers.

And he leaned down with a fond little whisper of a smile he pressed to her forehead, leaving it there for a long time as she wrapped her hands in folds of his shirt, sniffling again.

"We're all comin' back, Ellone. I promise."

* * *

><p>They're all lip-deep in shit, and it just keeps fucking rolling in.<p>

Galbadia's got reinforcements hanging out the ass-it's them against the whole fucking world, for all he knows, and now he gets what he saw in Quistis' eyes as she stood silently beside him, rolling her whip into a tight rattlesnake coil of fresh-oiled leather at her hip.

They're assboned. All of them. Pinch-faced Leonhart, panicking because he can't get through to Rinoa-only about five fucking million soldiers and bombed-out mountains of unscaleable rubble that's not getting moved by anything less than a fucking bulldozer between them, and he wants to go anyway; Kiros has to practically sit on his fucking head to keep him from breaking the line, and for once Seifer can't summon that familiar sneer for his rival: he'd savage the shit out of the throat of any fucker who tried to stand between him and Quistis.

So he positions himself next to Leonhart, one ass-over-teakettle lovesick asshole to another, and he waits for any little wedge of opening he can find that will let him smash something wider, that will create a breach in the sea-wall of Galbadians massing before them. Leonhart'll have to run like fuck, he wants to get through, and maybe Seifer will die, creating it for him-

But what the hell, y'know: he used to bone her too.

It's not about that, though, and he knows it. Maybe Squall's prissy little princess was more of a pain in the ass than anything, but she was always the harmless type of pain in the ass; a little gnat in his ear, demanding he buy her shiny stuff. And maybe it's half Pubes, but their kid doesn't deserve whatever fucked-up guinea pig shit Odine's probably doing to it right now, and y'know, just for once-

He'd kinda' like to be the hero. One of those storybook fuckers, all black and white morals, miles and miles away from that gray area shit he always seems to be dipping a toe in-hell, his whole fucking lower half, up to the torso, if he's being honest-and he figures some misguided rescue attempt of a pregnant woman is probably about as virtuous as he's ever going to get. Pubes is going to die if he gets that opening; no question about it. Ultimecia on fucking crank couldn't blast her way through all these assholes, but Seifer can appreciate the romanticism in one last stand for a woman so important to him the rest of the world can fuck itself sideways, for all Leonhart cares.

He knows just how the guy feels, after all.

His hands are sweating inside his gloves.

Hyperion's a fucking anvil dragging at his arm.

This is his blaze of glory-he can feel it in his fucking bones.

This trip-hammer pounding in his throat and ears and fingertips-it's not his heart, trying to take out a couple of fucking ribs; it's that blood-pound of absolute certainty he used to feel creep over him in Garden's gym with earbuds pulsing tectonic waves of shrieking rock bass into his head, his arms overhead just shy of lock-elbowed over-extension.

And he'd just lay there staring up at that barbell, picturing his death. Not because he wanted to die, but because the storybook heroes did not become knobbed collections of arthritic old joints, half crippled. They were forever young and strong and immortalized, and that old gray-haired man sitting somewhere on a porch swing dangling a grandkid on his knee-that was never going to be him.

Somewhere between now and then, he was going to make one hell of a motherfucking exit.

And he's always known this.

Maybe he's never pictured it quite like this, with his old instructor standing beside him and his heart a boulder in his throat, because he's terrified she'll go first-

But he's going to make sure it takes a dozen of the cocksmokers to bring him down-hell, why not make it two dozen-and he feels each meat-shred of chapped-dry lip section peel off his teeth in a smile he's pretty sure is genuine.

The Seifer Almasy Show-that's what he's going to turn this into. Because if he's not going to live through this, everyone who does is sure as fuck gonna' remember him.

His name's going to be the last thing on their lips when he sends them weeping to their graves; the imprints of knuckle dent someone will see in their skulls, years later when some random bulldoze clearing to make room for a new shopping mall or spa center or some shit brings their bodies boiling to the surface-

Those are going to be his.

The Seifer Almasy Show.

He likes the sound of that.

He's fit a lot of fucking teeth into this smile that's still on his face, and when the staredown that feels like an actual physical entity between opposing sides breaks up under shrieks of attack commands that fan out simultaneously from both sides, he's the first to go charging forward.

Battle lust: that's what they call this fever stringing beads of sweat along his upper lip and down each ridge of his spine.

That's what spins him in time to dodge a strike from an inferior gunbladist, and bring Hyperion whistling around to split the man's head like an axe-chopped log. A splitting head's a real interesting thing to listen to, if you've got the time: reminds him of that watermelon Cid brought home one afternoon, the one he shoved Wuss into when the little crybaby clipped him a good one in the nutsack; a wet hollow _thock _and a streak of red-mush stain across Wuss' ass later, and suddenly the fucking thing was open like this man's head, leaking brain all over the place.

His arm comes up in an overhand that separates some poor fucker's ear from his head; another swing divides the rest of his skull, neat as you fucking please.

What's that saying? 'Today's a good day to die' or some shit like that? It's not really day; it's that sort of watery orange-lit in between that pulses flare-gun glow against the horizon line, and it's still raining, so everything's mostly covered in a low-hanging gray-fog smear anyway. And not some gentle early-spring storm, either: it's a racehorse piss hitting his head and running down his face, getting in his eyes and turning the ground under his feet into a shit-slick skating rink. All that surface oil from wheezing old buses and squalling child-packed soccer vans is just sitting at the top now, and forget those lane separation paint lines blending half-faded into the road; they'll put you on your ass in a flat second. He's seen guys take spills from motorcycles just putting their feet down in the wrong spot.

So maybe he should amend that saying: 'Today's gonna' have to be a good enough day to die' because, frankly, everything looks like shit to him.

But maybe that's just because he can see Quistis out of the corner of his eye, roping throats with her pretty little hands. Maybe it's because Wuss is next to her, and the cowboy beside him-

Maybe he just wishes they could all go back to being little shitheels playing tag on a beach. Because back then-

Death was kind of an abstract. Nothing to worry about, really-it was just something that meant you went to live with a nice woman and her pretty smile and a man who brought home new toys.

It was not something that smelled like shit, or tasted like vomit in the back of your throat.

Not something that kept you awake at night, watching endless shadow-sketched reruns of shit-splatter brain splash, spraying your face.

That's what it is now. And that's what it's going to be for the rest of his life, no matter how long he's got left, and y'know-

He wishes he could go back to when it was just a pretty smiling woman on a sunny windswept beach, taking care of him forever.

* * *

><p>Kiros was screaming at him.<p>

Over teeth-chatter pops of rain-dampened automatic gunfire and pig-stuck squeals of blades glancing off one another, Squall couldn't really hear what he was saying.

He had a pretty good idea, though.

Because he'd found an opening-or rather, Almasy, crazy asshole Almasy, had cleared one for him-and Squall took it at a dead sprint, flicking Lionheart through terminal loops that took off hands and heads and stumps of spurting leg joints, and not for even a moment did he think about looking back.

There was an entire city-block-wide slag heap between them, twists of broken-spine metal support frames and concussion-shattered window panes-

And it didn't even matter. They could drop a mountain between him and that tangle of smoke-smudged spire reaching for the sky blocks away, and he'd find a way to get to her.

Someone's drum-rhythm of pavement-eating lope erupted to his left, and he twisted to bring Lionheart sparking up against the muzzle barrel that reached for his heart and spun his gunblade shrieking away; he double-fisted the pommel, putting his whole body behind a bat-swing that split rain-swollen air with a shrill flat whistle-

And Hyperion came up to smash Lionheart spinning away again, throwing blood.

Squall staggered and went to a knee on rain-damp pavement that ground crumbs of broken building underneath his leg, and the hand that shot out to steady him was Irvine's.

He stared up at the inflamed lips of a knife wound down his friend's hand and across the knuckles, and for one stupid uncomprehending moment, all he could think was: _that's going to scar_.

Seifer's wet-plastered hair streamed diluted pink, and beside him at his shoulder with her whip trailing barb-splattered blood behind her, Quistis' did the same. She had a ragged streak of bullet graze across her forehead, raw-meat pink around the edges.

Zell rubbed his knuckles, one of them slanting green-stick fractured up through skin that pulled back wet-gleaming lips around it.

Irvine pulled him easily onto his feet.

"Well, Pubes, let's get fucking moving. That dick trickle Odine's probably making Rinoa eat out his ass right now, to scientifically categorize the emotional repercussions of salad tossing a crazy old fuck, or something like that."

Somehow, the look on Quistis' face could almost make him assemble something that sort of resembled a smile.

Zell handed him Lionheart, that broken knuckle sticking up like carved-marble gravestone. "We got your back, man. Let's go."

When he was a child, Squall used to sit cross-legged on that beach thinking about how much they all annoyed him; Zell shrieking because Seifer had shoved sand down his pants again, Selphie singing and plaiting dandelion necklaces she'd try to make him wear, Irvine doodling in the sand and Quistis beside him, imperiously informing him how to do it better-

He'd just wanted them all to shut up and leave him alone.

He'd just wanted to never become attached to Selphie's cheerful smile or Quistis' curl of sideswept bang strand, dangling in front of her eyes as she read-Zell's stupid jokes Squall would never let himself admit actually sort of made him laugh, inside-Irvine's even-tempered deliberations between snarling throat-rip intensity of fights that got out of control-

You couldn't let yourself appreciate any of that, because one day it was all going to go away anyway. One day, there'd be nothing left but an empty porch stoop you didn't recognize, because your parents couldn't or wouldn't take care of you anymore-

But now standing here looking out over them all, Squall realized again that it didn't work like that. People crept in whether you wanted them to or not, and somehow you never even noticed until it was too late.

Rinoa had been like that.

He slit his eyes in a glare that held back sudden tears, and tightened his hand around Lionheart.

They let him lead their charge through half-buried humps of civilian casualty under bomb-rubble that puffed dry smoke trails of ash up under his feet. The rain bleeding into his uniform soaked him down to the bone, but he didn't feel cold; there was a sort of furnace fueling him now, throbbing under his skin, howling anger that fed him images of Rinoa and his child strapped to a table being poked and prodded and exclaimed over like lab-bred rat, and suddenly something rolled over inside him and clicked into place-

And he could suddenly understand the anger Almasy carried around like a nuclear reactor inside his eyes, barely banked.

This had to be exactly what it felt like, this eel-slide of nausea in his throat and jaw-creak of teeth clench that just barely held back every epitaph he had ever learned in weapons class, most of them courtesy of Seifer himself. The rigor mortis grip his fingers formed around his gunblade was the same clutch he imagined getting around Odine's throat.

Somewhere ahead of them, another explosion went off.

The road rolled an earthquake-heave beneath his feet, and he saw Quistis stumble out of the corner of his eye.

* * *

><p>She's not really sure how this has happened, but somehow she's two different people, right now.<p>

Rinoa is still here-it's her hands stretching up toward incarnadine tank-light, after all. It's her spiral of power she leaks like a pointing finger, stretching up toward the red eyewink glow of power light on the top of the capsule she's standing in front of.

It's her will that brings that light to a flickering death, and in the sudden night-black gloom, she sees lashless pale-blue eyelid twitch like something coming out of hibernation.

But Rinoa isn't quite _Rinoa _anymore, is she? Somehow she knows this. She thinks this might mean she's not crazy-after all, if you can still wonder if you're going crazy, it means you're not _really _crazy, right? Someone told her this once; or maybe it's just one of those sayings.

She doesn't know that anymore either.

There are a lot of things she doesn't know anymore.

There is a hand pressing itself against the glass in front of her, and a finger tap of let-me-out-of-here plea that squeals nails-on-chalkboard shrill in the silence.

All around her, half a dozen pairs of hands come up to drum this same nails-on-chalkboard shriek of finger tap plea. As far as she can see, REM seizure flickers of lashless pale-blue eyelids become tics of cautious blinks-

And there's a smile on her lips. It feels a little strange there, like it might not belong to her, and these hands she lifts in front of her shine oil-sheen black in the darkness; they're capped in little spurts of flame-flicker orange that take on a white-tinged glow like nuclear reactor gone critical-

And suddenly the capsule in front of her is on fire.

Suddenly they're all on fire, and she does not remember doing this, and for a moment she wonders_-is seifer the puppet or am I-_and a dry serpent-glide of a giggle slithers out between her lips. "Hello children; hello. Vos es tutus iam."

Steel creaks and groans and folds inward like melting plastic, like shapes of faces whirling in and out of fog-smear Time Compression, and somewhere there's a boy she's looking for-

Artillery shell-pop of shattering glass fills her ears like fog-smear muffled voice, calling out a name she thinks she's supposed to recognize-

_-squall squall squall squall squall squall squall squall squall-_

And sloshes of tank-liquid breaker soak the carpet beneath her feet, curling up around her toes.

Around her snake trailing veins of snapped-off wires that float up against her ankles, and now she remembers a flash of cloudless pale blue sky that spreads its perfect arch over a warm sunlit beach-

There's a girl underneath the sand, trying to climb out-

She is smiling with lips that have been chewed into thin strings of fish gill flutter, barely hanging on.

There are dripping shaved-bald children standing all around Rinoa now, and their limbs are emaciated sticks of breeze-rippled tree branch, stretching out toward her.

She is smiling as she takes their hands.

She is still picturing the girl on the beach, sitting on a crest of dune now playing with a little wooden doll; jointed wooden limbs fold over and break down and re-mold themselves into a long smooth line of maggot grub, and the girl with fish gill lips is holding it up, smiling.

She has no teeth.

Fingers like exposed bone close around Rinoa's palms and wrists and forearms, and around her gurgle sputters of failing life system, shorting out one by one.

_-hello children it's nice to see you hello children hello children don't be afraid don't be afraid we're here to help you-_

There's a boy saying her name somewhere.

* * *

><p>"What the fuck-"<p>

He was in the process of shoving Wuss' arm back into its socket when something pulled his eyes up past the corpse pale clench of his friend's face, and to the far line of buildings just visible beyond a crater-fringe of blown-out foundation.

Irvine's head swiveled slowly around. He had a wadded-up strip from his duster shoved into Zell's mouth so the little fucker wouldn't break his teeth biting down, and he paused there with one hand still on that fluttering little scrap, jaw swinging.

Zell screamed something incomprehensible into his gag; Seifer jerked his arm with a teeth-grit that felt like it was going to break his fucking jaw, and braced himself in the rubble underfoot. Wuss' shoulder slid back into place with a damp pop; he sagged forward, panting like a wounded animal through his nose, spitting out expletives Seifer could hear even through the gag.

He took a knee in the blood-soaked dust next to Zell, letting the smaller man lean up against him as he slowly clawed his way back upright, unwinding the strip of Irvine's duster from his lips and spitting it with a ragged teeth-thinned hiss into the jumbled layer of busted up sidewalk underneath them. "Shit-_shit_."

"Cowboy," Seifer snapped, scowling as Wuss used the corner of his shirt sleeve to mop blood-flecked drool off his mouth. "Get your fucking lips _off _me, Wuss. The fuck's going on over there?" He brought his hand up to indicate the ragged line of shadow-smeared human shapes picking their way toward them, birthday naked if his eyes weren't shitting him.

Irvine had Exeter across his knee now, hastily loading. He popped the scope off with a squeal that made Zell wince, and brought that brushed-steel arc of eyepiece up to his face, mouth going thin. "The kids from Odine's lab. Creepy ones in the tanks, all wired up and shit? It's them."

"What?" Zell panted, shakily levering himself back to both feet using Seifer's shoulder to steady himself. "You shitting us?"

"Yeah-sounds like a real fuckin' funny joke to me, Wuss."

"Piss off, man. It's just-I mean, what the hell would they be doing out here?"

"Don't know," Irvine replied grimly, re-fitting his scope. "Maybe someone busted in there and let them out."

"Fuck; where's Quistis?"

"She and Squall took off while you and Dincht were havin' a moment. He wouldn't wait; she went with him."

He hadn't even fucking _noticed_, and his heart inside his chest gave a cold wet thump that sent it careening down into his stomach, his balls going into a cringing please-don't-fucking-hurt-us clench that felt like some ham-fisted jackass had their whole fucking hand around them. Funny how everything in your whole fucking body reacted to fear, from the tension-prickle along his stress-knotted shoulders to that flinching scrotum clench that made him think about how badly he had to piss. Going into a fight, you never thought about that until it was too late-shouldn't have been so goddamned hard to take a piss before you stormed the field, really, but there it was.

Or maybe it was just the thought of Quistis out there with just Pubes to watch her ass that made him want to piss his fucking pants.

Leonhart could handle it; maybe the asshole wasn't as balls-to-the-wall batshit as Seifer, but he'd more than held his own during their frequent sparring matches, and Seifer had never left the training center without a few more bruises and bleeding drag marks of scored hits than he'd gone in with. Exhibit A was his fucking forehead, but he had a lot more where that came from. Quistis had found most of them over the last couple of weeks.

His chest squeezed again, thinking about her.

He came to his feet with Hyperion in his hand, shaking Wuss' hand off his arm.

The mouth he opened to bark a brisk 'start moving' command came down on his tongue like a fucking scythe, and suddenly there was no more ground under his feet or Hyperion in his hand or bone-jab of Wuss' hip against his side, and he crashed down on a bomb-masticated block of foundation slab before he even realized he was airborne-

And there went two of his ribs, gunshot cracks that smashed fireballs spinning across the backs of his eyelids like fucking thermite going off in his head.

* * *

><p>If you've never broken a rib, then you don't know it's a jagged-snapped stub of sword scrape playing fuckass with every goddamn organ in your chest-doesn't matter how shallowly you breathe, your whole world's fucking fire and pain and dull rust-scratch of bone tearing shit up like it's an old goddamned knife broken off in your side.<p>

So the only thing he can do, is lie here staring at the sky hiccupping air and suppressing expletives he doesn't have breath for, holding his side.

Which is how he sees the next meteor streak of something he doesn't recognize flare out into a firework scatter that comes down like little fucking hammers of Hyne, pummeling his friends into the dust. It's not a bomb-that's all he knows right now. It's something that smears little fairy light afterimages of red-glowing illumination across his eyes, and it's not until he blinks, once, twice, again, that he realizes it's magic.

Not anything he's ever seen before, but he recognizes that ozone reek sitting in his nostrils; it's as familiar as the nasty fucking feet smell of Garden's locker room.

His attempt to say something is a little _hrr hrr hrr _that hurts his throat.

He can turn his head just far enough to see Wuss, pulling himself slowly onto his knees, bleeding from the nose.

The cowboy's somewhere his head can't twist around far enough to make out; he might be dead, from the stricken look on Wuss' face.

There's another flash in the sky above him.

* * *

><p>"Mother<em>fucking<em>-" The expletive hurt his goddamned _ribs_, but it felt satisfying as hell coming out, so he hissed it again, rolling onto his good side with one hand cushioning the pudding whatever that shit was had made of his left side. He could see the cowboy now after all, his pretty face all cut up and his hat somewhere in the rubble underneath their feet, probably unsalvageable now. Guess he might not have to worry about that; those naked little fuckers were still pressing forward, their arms crawling twitching blue-white veins of something else he didn't recognize, and his gunblade in his hand felt like it weighed a thousand fucking pounds.

At least he hadn't busted up his dominant side.

"_Shit,_" Zell blurted out next to him. "What the hell's going on?"

Seifer had a single Fira left, and he'd never been very good at controlling that particular element; he let it fly anyway-improperly as hell-no fucking surprise there-and it dissolved with a pathetic little fizzle against the dome of soap bubble shimmer that flickered up around them.

"Hey!" Zell snapped. "Those are kids, man-what are you doing?"

"Yeah, well those fuckers just tried to _kill _us, if you didn't notice. What am I supposed to do? Give them a fucking lollipop?"

"I think we need to get the hell out of here. _Now_." Irvine backpedaled a few steps with Exeter over his shoulder, hair hanging half out of his ponytail and the sleeve of one arm frayed into a jagged little cuff around his elbow, exposing a long black streak of burn mark down his forearm.

Red inflamed burn blisters made him think of his mother, and blood-soaked deck wood underneath his cheek.

He grabbed Wuss by the back of the shirt, yanking him backward. "Let's get the fuck out of here." Seifer stopped halfway through the motion, stumbling Zell off balance almost into his arms, and he barely even noticed, because between them and that arc of creepy fucking procession, right in the motherfucking _path _of that robotic barefoot lockstep-

He could see a flash of gold.

He could see a glint of silver, flashing in and out reptile tongue flicks of strikes and blocks and clumsy fucking counterstrikes that wouldn't do a single goddamned _thing _against those fuckers bearing down on the cluster of soldiers Pubes and Quistis had gotten hung up in-

"God_dammit_!"

He broke into a stumbling run that made him want to throw up, that jolted those snapped-off nubs of busted rib clanking against each other, and he wanted to sack punch whoever'd thought up the whole fucking concept of love; what kind of fucking _moron _came up with this shit anyway?

Maybe he could take it up with Hyne; he'd probably be meeting the asshole pretty soon. And not that he was a particularly pious guy, but anything that made him sprint half-crippled across half a fucking city block just to get to a woman had to be pretty fucking serious. He certainly felt like he might be having some sort of religious experience right now, trying not to vomit as he ran.

"Yo! Almasy, you shitwit-where ya' going?"

He kept running. Wuss and the cowboy could follow or they could go fuck themselves; didn't matter a whole hell of a lot to him, because he was already pulling up now, staggering into the center of all of it with his side and his throat on fire, and he was starting to think maybe Leonhart and Quistis were better off without him; the next step he took folded his shaking legs underneath him, and he had to stab Hyperion down through concussion-cracked sidewalk square to keep himself from going all the way down to his knees.

_Shit_. Seifer leaned all his weight down on the handle, and the motherfucker _slipped_, almost pitching him into a faceplant Leonhart would probably never let him live down-the requirement being that any of them lived at all, of course.

Quistis' bottom lip had a fist-smashed look to it, and the surge of adrenaline this shot through his legs and up into his spine stood him up straight. If she'd just kindly point him toward whoever had done it, he'd rip the guy a new hole to shit through, broken ribs or no broken ribs.

Seifer brought Hyperion up in a ringing backhand that smashed a hurtling rifle butt spinning away from Quistis' face, hurting his ribs so fucking badly he did lean over to vomit now, heaving onto the sidewalk as Pubes skewered some G. Garden asshat through the face.

There was a little break in the knot of combat snarled around them-mainly stemming from the fact that everyone who was not Pubes, Trepe or himself was lying dead or dying in the debris around them-and Quistis dropped to her knees beside him, clasping him by the arms as he leaned his sweating forehead against her shoulder. "Those fucking things from Odine's lab-"

"We know," she said grimly, brushing hair from his eyes. "They haven't attacked us yet, but-"

Seifer leaned away from her to spit a wad of red-tinged saliva onto the ground. "Well, they sure as fuck weren't so friendly toward _us_. _Fuck_." He spit again, breathing raggedly into her shirt and holding his side.

"Squall, do you have any more healing spells stocked? Preferably Curaga; it won't set his ribs, obviously, but it'll help him move a little better."

"I'm out."

Seifer dragged the sleeve of his trench coat across his mouth. He let her push him back just a little, far enough back for him to see her eyes, and he tried to smile up into her pretty blood-smudged face, like he wasn't trying not to spew vomit all over her tits.

The line of children came to a staggered halt twenty feet away, and Seifer tried to push Quistis behind him; she gave him a cold little look that might have made his balls crawl for cover, if he didn't hurt too badly to hardly notice, and stood up with Save the Queen unraveling at her feet.

She stepped forward to meet them.

"What the hell are you doing-" He lunged for her arm, and in his side his ribs gave a chainsaw roar of pain that put him back down on his hands and knees, retching.

"Rinoa," Quistis said softly.

Leonhart's head snapped up at the sound of his princess' name.

Seifer looked up through the blur of semi-conciousness sliding itself down over his eyes, hacking up another clot into the curled fist he made of his hand. Something that looked like just another building-thrown silhouette in the burning half-dawn light smeared across the sky overhead detached itself and resolved into lines of soft black hair and smiling pink lips.

Squall surged forward with a little cry, and Seifer darted a hand out to tangle itself in the hem of Leonhart's pants, jerking him to a standstill. "Look at her fucking eyes," he hissed.

* * *

><p>That's the boy she keeps seeing in her head, heartbeat insistent. He is a little <em>thump thump thump <em>inside her brain like the drumming in her belly, and there's a look on his face she's pretty sure she's supposed to recognize.

The color drains out of his cheeks into a flush along his neck, and the pretty blonde-haired man holding his pants lets go slowly, getting his feet carefully underneath him. There is something about him that narrows her eyes, that sharpens something inside Rinoa Heartilly to a point that is an itch inside her brain-

_-traitor traitor traitor traitor THAT BOY IS A TRAITOR RINOA HE USED TO BE ONE OF US-_

The children around her wait patiently, holding her hands.

"Rinoa?" This boy she's supposed to know has a voice that's a broken little gasp, and it makes something stir inside her, it makes something twitch up against swollen aching belly skin with a hit that feels like professionally-placed punch, doubling her over. The fingers of these children who do not know what to do without her fall away, and she is on her knees now gasping gasping gasping-_something is inside of her and it wants _out_-_

There is a chatter of gunfire from somewhere nearby.

And the blonde woman with the pretty blue eyes who has put herself like a shield between Rinoa and these men she's supposed to know-

She is falling.

The blonde man is there to catch her, and she thinks there is even more anguish on his face than the twisted frowning visage of the boy from the meadow, standing before her with his arm hanging limply swinging down his side.

His weapon seems to have gotten very heavy.

The rain is a reptilian little hiss between them, and even though there is something inside her tearing everything apart-even though it is yanking everything that is Rinoa Heartilly all to pieces-_they're never going to put you back together again rinoa heartilly sat on a wall rinoa heartilly had a great fall-_

She is still trying to remember his name.

The blonde man is screaming something she can't understand.

The pretty blue-eyed girl is in his arms, and her head swings wetly echoing mannequin thumps against his chest.

There is thunder in her ears and chest and pulse-thumps of fingertip, twitching underneath her skin.

Her children around her scatter in confusion, and she can only watch pale lumps of liquid-shriveled hand come up through arcs that become firework sprays of blue, blowing this boy that is a constant arrhythmic rumble inside her head off his feet. She is gasping out little _hrk hrk hrks _of throat-stomp breathlessness that taste like blood, and now there's a hand in front of her, stretched out into palsied stumps of joint-locked finger.

They are reaching for this boy who has no name, this boy whose feet twitch live-current feedback through his limbs-

_-mary mary quite contrary how does your garden grow how does your garden grown rinoa rinoa there's a mockingbird waiting for you if you're good rinoa the children have to burn they have to burn don't you understand they'll kill us-_

She thinks the blonde-haired man might be sobbing; it's hard to tell through the rain.

The girl in his arms is very still and silent and red.

The _hrk hrk hrk _in her throat is beginning to coalesce, is finally pulling the fragmented shards of itself together into a name that hurts her throat, and maybe it's just a croak, maybe it's just a tiny insignificant wheeze beneath reptilian rain hiss and gunfire stone-rattle-

But she likes to think he can hear it anyway.

"_Squall_."

Swirling flaps of skin-shred and flakes of breeze-whirled cinder fleck become dancer's twirls of petals between them.

There is a smile on her face as she goes down clutching the small hard hump of their child.


	25. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty Three**

Main Street

Esthar

Just an eye blink.

That's how long it takes for her to slump forward into his arms, spraying blood down the front of his shirt.

But it feels like a fucking century.

This arrhythmic thunder roll in the side of his neck, this surf pulse of thundering in-tide inside his ears, rushing, beating, pounding-

It's his heart.

The whole fucking world's gone tit's up, or ass backwards, or whatever the fuck this re-arrangment of time and space that's happening around him really is, and he doesn't understand a single motherfucking _thing_-

The entire fucking planet has gone still and soundproof and tight around him, and all that's left, the only thing he can still hear is his fucking heart, thundering like the far-off caldera eruptions of missiles.

This doesn't even make any fucking sense. How can she be dangling here in his arms, spurting red all over the place, how can she be fucking _not moving _when that's not right, when that's not how _the fucking story was supposed to end _and his mother was a _fucking liar _just like he'd started to suspect she probably always was-

"Quistis." His voice is a sickday croak he doesn't even recognize. She's so fucking _pale_, and even though it pulls his ribs, even though it shoots new fingers of fire-chewing agony through his whole fucking body, he swings her up into his arms like he's carrying her across the threshold, and he's cradling her head in one hand so it'll stop bouncing around against his chest, and it's not like she cares, it's not like she can even fucking _notice _anymore-

But he's doing it anyway, because he's not really sure what the fuck's going on anymore, because none of this makes any goddamned _sense _to him-

She's leaving him.

She's already left him.

It's his fucking mother all over again, her severed blinking head rolling over to look at him one final time, and it's selfish as fucking hell, because he's supposed to be thinking about her right now, he's supposed to be mourning all the things she won't get to say or do or be now-

But the only thing bubbling up to the surface, the only thing that's clawing its way up into his throat and out through his lips in a wordless echoing cry that's got all those nights of sleepless shadow-etched hell behind it-

He can't breathe he can't breathe he can't motherfucking _breathe_-

He doesn't want to be alone. So there you have it-Seifer Almasy's thinking about himself with another of the heroes bleeding out in his arms, and it's not like this should be a real big fucking shock for anyone, it's not like this should come as any fucking _surprise_-

But it would have been nice if he wanted to save Quistis Trepe just because. It would have been nice if he'd just wanted to let the world have her for a little longer.

But of course, that's not what's stumbling his shit-useless legs forward trying to find a draw point, trying to find just one shitty little short-out sputter of Curaga that might bring her back to him.

He can't let her go. He _doesn't want to let her go_. She's _his_. She's his and he is hers, forever, the way mother and son were supposed to be, and it is _not fucking fair_.

Something else that isn't fair:

The stray bullet that lifts him up onto his toes and shoves him stumbling backward, losing his grip on her. She hits the ground underneath his boots with a splatter that sprays mud like shit, and he's just standing there blinking down at his open empty hands wondering what the fuck is happening when the next round goes all the way through his chest and exits out his back, scraping spine.

And now he's falling.

Funny thing is, when he goes to his knees coughing blood, he's still surprised.

He's expected this all along, and yet there's still that leftover kernel of arrogance in him, telling him there's nothing on this entire fucking planet that can bring Seifer Almasy down.

And now the ground is a splatter of shit against his own cheek, and everything-Pubes' twitching feet and Quistis' blank white-marble face-is a diagonal mud-blur that's still surrounded in that eerie heart-thunder containment bubble wiping out everything else, and his breath-

His breath is a rusty sword-scrape in his throat and down his ribs. He keeps hiccupping it in, keeps forcing it down, and it's not doing any good, because the only thing he can focus on, the only thing that keeps pounding like a fucking migraine in his head-

Is how much it fucking _hurts. _

Fuck seeing stars when you get smashed in the side of the head; there's an entire fucking galaxy wheeling in front of his eyes. He's trying to blink, trying to make it all a fade-to-black crosswipe that takes away everything that is not Quistis' vacant staring eyes away from him, because everything else, all the dying and screaming and bowel-splash of failing systems is filler detail, and he doesn't give a shit about any of it.

His breathing is a labored whistle in his ears.

His hands are knots of arthritis knurl, hooked into claws that tear up the ground around him.

There's a fireball of magic in the sky overhead, lighting up the dawn like a plume of flare signal. Hurts his eyes too much to look at it, though, y'know? It's like that fucking dorm bulb above his head, blazing on to bring him cursing from his bed-_you're late cadet Almasy get up-_and he can barely stand to look at it.

It's shining off her glasses.

They're streaked in red and shit-brown, and you know, he can barely even see anything behind them anyway-

So he closes his eyes. He closes his eyes and he holds onto that shit-slick hump of rain-greased sidewalk underneath him for all he's fucking worth, and boy Seifer with all the ambitions, boy Seifer with all the fairytales and man Seifer with all the demons and nightmares and regrets he's never going to be able to atone for anyway-

They all wait to die.

* * *

><p>"Rinoa."<p>

His voice was a leather-creak of plea in his throat, old man hoarse.

Somehow he'd pulled himself into sitting position.

Lionheart stood between them, wedged into cracks of bomb-softened sidewalk, dividing her face into two halves of this woman he loved but was not sure he recognized anymore, and brightening dawn light showed him crayon squiggles of bloodshot incomprehension, shining in her face. "Rinoa-"

He was seeing Almasy lying feebly twitching beside Quistis, Quistis with her eyes open but not seeing anymore, Quistis with her hands full of blood, streaming rain-thinned pink between her fingers.

The knife in his heart was twisting; he'd never even felt it slip in and here it was fatally slicing everything inside of him, everything he was or had been or could be, and the scatter of blood-pattern red in the mud beside his boot-

It reminded him of that crescent moon arch splattering in the dust underneath him, so very long ago.

He'd have killed Seifer that day if he could have, and now sitting here looking down at him, this damp-dripping lump of former rival lying in a limp unmoving pile beside his once upon a time instructor, his once upon a time _sister_-

He could only scrape one fervent gut-clench entreaty up out of his throat. "Rinoa…_please_. Help them."

He wasn't even sure he was still speaking with Rinoa. He wasn't even sure this one final gut-clench entreaty could change anything, because staring with stiff unblinking disbelief at Quistis' pale flopping throat, rag doll arched-

He was pretty sure it was too late.

He was pretty sure the stories Matron used to tell them, the ones he pretended not to like because they were stupid unrealistic children's fables-

They were not true.

He'd known that all along. He'd known sitting there with his chin on his knees and a faint frown line between his eyebrows that princesses did not always get saved, that sometimes children were left all alone in worlds that had forgotten them, and sometimes-

Sometimes justice did not even get served.

Sometimes the world came down to just this:

A stretch of space that was the final echoing eternity of a heartbeat in its last thrashing death throes. A spasm of claw-hooked fingers going soft in the mud, and a sink-gurgle of bullet wound spitting out its last bubbling sighs.

He pulled himself up to his knees, cutting his hands on Lionheart.

Almasy's right eye was open, looking at him.

"Rinoa…Rinoa _please_."

* * *

><p>The first thing he sees as he lays dying is his mother, leaning over him.<p>

Not his torturer or his rapist, or that needlepoint smile cunt whore assboning his mind six ways 'til Sunday-

Just his mother, smiling down at him.

There is a fringe of emerging sunlight behind her shoulders, staining her red.

Not even red-dawn-flushed pink of spring-blooming roses like the ones in her garden, and he thinks he can hear the ocean just beyond her, thick tidal-wave roar in his ears.

Maybe this ripple of liquid curling cold-winter fingers up through his boots to form puddles around his toes is not Quistis' blood after all, but that ocean.

Leave a guy to his fantasies, y'know?

Because in this fantasy he's seven again, and he's lying on his back in his mother's garden, and y'know-

Bell-clash of tangling blades and damp blood-gurgle of throat cut-it's all still going on around him, but somehow only his mother's smile is getting through to him, somehow only her soft reassuring palm press of cheek caress is making it down through all the layers and layers of cotton-bud haze that's blocking everything out, and he rolls his tongue back to try and clear the clot from his throat-

And talking is like giving birth through his fucking trachea, but he has to say this, he needs to _make sure _she fucking knows this-

"Quistis." It's a short hard gasp that doesn't sound like him at all. "Quistis, Matron-don't let her-"

She's brushing hair out of his eyes. Her smile's the one from the front porch of that house beside the sea, and if he squints his eyes just slightly, if he lets the sweat bead hovering on his eyelid slide down through his lashes-

The film this drops over his vision is just like the sea, catching him at high tide as he runs hollering down the beach, wielding his stick sword.

There are sandcastles beyond his mother. He's not sure because there's still this thermite blaze of pain fucking up all his senses, trying to distract him-

But he thinks that might be Quistis beside them, her hands full of sand.

There's no more mud underneath his cheek; it's all hard-packed sand, and for a moment he wonders what he's doing lying on his mother's beach like this, and then he remembers that little sniveling shit Wuss knocked him over, and bossy Quisty with her stupid sandcastles-

She'd just sat there patting and smoothing and molding, laughing at him.

She's smiling at him now.

She's older, and she's grown into this fantastic pair of legs and tits just like he always knew she would, and there's a gunshot bang of screen-slam from the house and suddenly Messenger Girl is standing on the porch, waving to him.

There's something wrong with this, but he can't really figure out what it is.

He sits up with his hands draped across his knees on his mother's beach, and the sun is a half-moon fringe of yellow in the sky overhead.

* * *

><p>"Rinoa-"<p>

He had to prop himself, swaying, on Lionheart.

"Squall." She had to climb awkwardly lumbering to her feet, their child getting in the way. "Squall?"

He turned his shaking hand into a fist he slid down over the handle of his gunblade, fighting tears. The children around them drew into a tight huddle like bashful daughters and sons clinging to legs of laughing mothers, trying to find her hands. Squall could see faint phosphorous glow edge their fingers in watery pale-blue light that became spreading heart-pulse thumps of arterial magic, crawling up their arms.

"Rinoa, _please_!" This was the only thing he could say, the only choked-off gasp of thick-clotted breath that could make it past his throat.

But it couldn't take away the fist in his chest. It couldn't bring her calm reassuring instructor's smile back to her bleached-marble lips, white as his knuckles, and it could not shuffle Almasy's feet back underneath him like this was just one more training session, knocking him on his ass.

He stumbled forward a step.

She was looking at him like he was something of mild interest, head cocked to one side and hair cascading oil-gleaming black down over one shoulder, and this took the fist in his chest, the knife in his heart-

And it jerked them, it _twisted _them so hard it brought him shaking to his knees, half a handspan away from Seifer's boot, and everything around him-oceanic bellow of gun turret swivel and pounding jackhammer clank of steel-jointed limbs, full-throated snarls of war cries and death screams and foundation-crushed pleas-

It all went away.

It all became a distant surf-murmur in his ears, chipping away at his brain.

He had to kneel there blinking comprehension back into his world for a long time.

There was nothing about this rain-streaked tableau that made any sense to him-Almasy was the kind of unstoppable force you let barrel right over the top of you, because there wasn't a damn thing you could do about it. And maybe you didn't want him on your side exactly, if it meant you'd have to work with him, but neither did you want him working for the other guys, because the second that happened, you were screwed.

He didn't have to like the guy to not want him dead.

But Quistis…his heart gave a twitch that felt like it was coming apart, that felt like someone had gotten a hand in there and shredded everything, and now he was choking on the ash-fine pieces of it, trying to breathe.

Breathing was a column of fire in his chest that made him want to vomit.

He crawled to her side with Rinoa and her children silently watching and slid his hand beneath the blood-tangled clumps of her hair, her glasses winking meteor-streaks of muzzle flare back at him.

There were raindrops on her cheeks-or those were his tears, he wasn't sure anymore-and he brushed them carefully away, and his hands and lips and voice-

They wouldn't stop _shaking_.

"Rinoa," he croaked again. He was looking down at Almasy's scraped-up face as he spoke, because he couldn't bear to see Quistis'. "Rinoa, you can help them-_please_-"

She kneeled down across from him and swept her fingers back through rain-slick clusters of red-streaked blonde, and the look on her face was so very familiar, so very _right_ that his stomach gave a brutal riptide squeeze-

And now his fist-shredded heart in his chest gave a thump that echoed up through his throat, that seized his chest with a wild helpless hope that made him rock back on his heels cradling Quistis' limply unresponsive face to the hollow of his throat-

And her blandly neutral smile ruined it all.

Her coldly slanted eyes didn't know him, didn't even _look _at him, and all the heart-wrenching bewilderment wiped from her eyes like a movie shifting scenes, and now there was something else staring out of Rinoa, something Almasy had tried to warn him about, and he was suddenly scrambling backward holding Quistis protectively against his chest, ice water draining from his heart and emptying down into his spine.

"Rinoa."

"Give her to me."

Her hand shot out to twist in a retractile squeeze around his ankle, and Quistis in his arms gave a lurch that almost dumped her on the ground at Seifer's feet-

He could taste blood now, and metallic adrenaline aftertaste that shivered down through his throat in one heart-pumping surge that seized him like an opponent getting hold of him, like Seifer gripping him in a sleeper's hold he used to make Squall listen to jeers he could not get away from-

And he was suddenly on his feet, Quistis' weight stumbling him forward into the swaying rain-painted handle of his gunblade-

There was a smear of white across his eyes. He tried to blink it away, but it was still there, blooming into fractal tree branch blurs tinted black-purple along the edges.

Something kicked his legs out from underneath him-or maybe they'd just given up-and he hit war-torn pavement hard enough to lose his grip on Quistis.

There was a clockwork tick tick tick of something in his chest, and he followed the thin pale line of rain-damp flesh that was not making any sense to him up to a hunched-over shoulder, and now he did understand-this thin pale line of rain-damp flesh was an arm, and it extended all the way down to his chest, _through _his chest-

And the clockwork tick tick tick of something in his chest was the exploratory finger flicks of her flexing fist, squeezing shut and snapping open.

Quistis' pants were bunched up to the knee, showing him raw-scraped shin skin.

Her glasses had slipped down off her face to lay fracture-starred against the pavement.

Almasy's other eye was open now, and he could see them both looking at him.

* * *

><p>There's something wrong with his little fantasy.<p>

He's still sitting on his mother's beach watching Quistis mold sandcastles along the shoreline, and the sun's a cloak-heavy trickle of heat down his back-

But that rain-greased sidewalk's back under his cheek, and now there's a smoke-thick finger-tickle of shit reek and gunpowder stench in his nostrils, all tangled up together.

Pubes pleading with Rinoa to save him is a shrill knife-squeal in his ears.

He doesn't get it; Quistis, sure, but him? It's not like he and Pubes are fucking besties, for shit's sake.

It's taking him a long-ass time to die. His right arm's numb and his head hurts and Quistis' death is still a world-ending fireball in his chest, and it's time for him to fucking _go_, all right? He's earned his fucking blaze of glory, and it's not supposed to be this, this slow-slide of death smell and artillery boom and thundering war screams of ships wheeling overhead-

For a moment he wonders if the Ragnarak's up there, and then he remembers there's no more Messenger Girl to man it. She's sitting on the front porch he can still sort of see, swinging her legs and humming to herself, and maybe he was just an asshole about her after all, because the sight of her in that eye-searing dress smiling up into the sky heats his anesthetically numb heart, just a little.

And then Leonhart's pleading goes hoarse and scared and uncertain, and suddenly Quistis is sliding away from him, and now the beach condenses and twists and wisps away into smoke-

And it's all the shining shot-up streets of Esthar around him now, and the blade-sharp prod of concussion-split pavement, jabbing into the side of his face.

He hears Lionheart clatter down somewhere near his feet, and he realizes that if he just stretches himself the tiniest fraction of a bit, he can nudge the tip of it with his boot. This shoots flame down his ribs that wraps around to his spine, and he's got both hands to his chest before he even realizes he can still sort of use them, and if this whole bleeding-to-death thing would just _hurry the hell up_-

Leonhart's staring at him.

He doesn't have to turn his head to see that, and his eyes tilt through red-swirled smears of sunrise lighting up the sky and black-shadowed curves of pavement he can just barely see-

And there's Quistis, lying on her side between them.

There's Quistis, with her eyes peacefully shut, and it was supposed to be _him_, it was _supposed to motherfucking be him_, and now he's terrified that he's not dying after all, that he's going to be stuck in this eternal loop for the rest of his life, this circle of red dawn smear and ink-black pavement he's going to watch for hours upon hours somewhere on a ceiling beside his mother-

There's a kindling of rage somewhere around the base of his spine.

Leonhart's choking on something-words or fear or blood he's not sure, but now suddenly there's a little white line going through his chest, now suddenly Rinoa's crouching in front of him, and Seifer realizes that's her arm, elbow-deep in Pubes' chest.

She's turning it slowly.

The sky is spinning above him, and he thinks maybe he's dying after all, he thinks maybe he won't have to watch this, because maybe Pubes is an annoying robotic queer who would benefit significantly from Seifer's foot up his ass-

But he doesn't want to see this.

He doesn't want to see his old rival coughing up the clots he can feel in his own throat, and he sure as shit doesn't want to watch him fold over to slump facedown against this pavement that smells like old blood.

It reminds him of the Training Center.

Hyne, her face is so fucking white-it's the only thing he can focus on with Pubes screaming in the background and those creepy children fanning out around them, and it still hurts, you know? He's supposed to be numb by now. He's supposed to be just a flattened grease stain on the sidewalk, left behind to be pocket-picked by some fumbledick on the other side.

Leonhart's dangling from her arm, retching, and he has to turn his face away, he has to blink away little drips of moisture down his face that don't feel like rain anymore, and the lump in his throat squeezes like a fist balling up.

He hopes it's fast.

* * *

><p>Her mind is a frantic spinning jumble of fairytales and children's songs and meadows<em>-ashes ashes we all fall down rinoa I'm sorry they couldn't put you back together again rinoa here's your mockingbird is your pocket full of posies good little girl-<em>

It hurts it hurts it _hurts_-

There's a flicker breaking through like an interfering radio station, and it's wrapped around her whispering her name, it's soft and warm and it makes her feel safe, it makes her feel _loved_-

And suddenly this man in front of her is not a nameless faceless boy somewhere in a meadow she can only sort of remember-

Her hand pulls free with a wet suction-cup squelch, and now he's falling forward across her lap, gurgling something that sounds like her name, and she cannot think, she cannot process any of this, because nothing makes _sense _to her anymore-

_Nonononononononononononono-_

Her sobs are wrenching cries that jerk her whole body, that echo like shotgun blasts inside her chest and her nerveless shaking hands glow wet-shine red, burnished as glass-

She lays them down across his back, and the children around her and the one inside her all huddle in close, and she can feel something inside her tear itself free like she's giving birth to it, and now suddenly there's a thermal heat in her chest radiating out through her fingertips-

Out extend arachnid ozone-reeking limbs from these children gathered around her, stretching down to touch the pool that's gathering underneath her hands.

It's a blaze of white across her vision, bright as the sun.

* * *

><p>An expanding mushroom cloud of white took up his whole field of vision.<p>

Zell snapped a right cross into the throat of the jerk trying to skewer Irvine with his knife, and a smooth arc of backfist brought him around hip to hip with the guy, dropping him like a rock.

He took the brief respite to lean both hands damply sliding off his knees, gasping.

It took him a moment to realize there was suddenly no one else in between him and his friends, and now he snapped back upright with his heart in his throat and Kinneas' hand on his shoulder, hiccupping in air that didn't want to slide down his throat quite right.

He took the distance at a dead sprint.

He could already see most of them from here, a bloody little tangle on the ground.

All around him knots of warfare began to peel apart, come undone, and the eternal echoing blasts of firearm scatter-shots and pin-yanked grenades began to peter out, slowly. His harsh animal wheezing was louder than them now, his feet pounding reverberations of each slapping step up from his toes and into his chest. He hurt everywhere-three broken knuckles and a shoulder that still popped and cracked like it wanted to slip out of the socket again, couple a' bruised ribs and pulled ligaments and superficial wing shots of bullet graze showing pink along his legs and arms and sides-

Yeah, he was in pretty damn nasty shape.

Almasy was a whole lot worse, though.

He was the first one Zell reached, and he landed skidding knee-down across the pavement beside him, leaving behind streaks of flesh that opened toothless gum-smiles of new wounds.

His hands were shaking.

His hands were shaking and the sky was spinning out above him, and there was something surging up his throat that tasted a lot like vomit, and all for _Almasy_, all for this stupid tormenting shitheel stretched out prone in front of him, and this fist at his throat-

It was _his_, angled teeth-slants of broken knuckles stamping bloody smears across his neck.

He had to keep it there for a long time.

The little _hic hic hic _someone was making-that wasn't him, was it? He was pretty sure he was taking this just fine.

The sleeve he dragged slanting down from his eyes over his nose smeared snot across his face. Rain-it was _rain _on his face, and goddammit, Almasy was just _lying _there, his open-lipped asshole sneer full of blood and his hands a convex tent over his maw of a chest-

Irvine had Quistis in his arms.

He could see a fringe of old-drying blood like a smear of lipstick around her mouth.

Almasy's head was suddenly in his lap, and the jerk, the _fucker_, he was heavy and slippery and hiccupping little blood-bubble gasps through his throat that sounded like sobs-

He was breathing.

He was _breathing_.

One final heave of Almasy's blood-slick deadweight pulled his shoulder with a wet bone on bone squeal from its socket, and he had to sit there for a moment, blinking fading pinwheels of black from his eyes. "Hey-hey, Almasy, can you hear me?" He shrugged Seifer's head up onto his good shoulder and slid both hands down over that gaping wide-lipped maw, swallowing back his dinner. Mother_fucker_, his shoulder hurt. "I got a Cura left, ok? I got a Cura left and you're gonna' be fine-" His voice broke and scattered into pieces he did not bother to scavenge back together, and he braced himself on the shining rain-wet pavement with Seifer's head flopping brokenly on his shoulder, breathing coherence back into his foggy pain-muffled brain.

And he pushed.

The magic drained sharply buzzing from his hands, a whining fly-drone vibration in his bones.

A roar of dam-break in his ears and combustion pressure of shrill knife-edge pain in his arteries-

And Almasy lit up like the sky above him, edging slowly into new day blood-gloom.

He let his chin thud hollowly echoing down on Almasy's hair, because he couldn't hold his head up anymore. Through half-slit blurs of exhaustion-smeared eyes he could see Quistis' legs swinging limply from Irvine's arms, and Squall beside him kneeling sobbing next to a rain-soaked lump of shredded sky-blue shirt flap-

The rain was pissing down even harder.

Seifer gave a gurgling little sigh in his arms, and went still.

Zell let the fist in his throat unwind, let everything he held clenched up like a fighter tensing for a blow go slack, and the burning in his gut became a nuclear sizzle in his heart, squeezing breathless wheezes of sobs from his lips.

He kept both arms around his friend, because he didn't know what else to do with them.

* * *

><p>"Why did you do that, Rinoa?" She keeps whispering it to herself like one more repetition, just one final flicker of her tongue against bleeding numb-swollen lips will suddenly unlock this mystery she doesn't understand, and her eyes in their sockets are rolling rolling rolling, showing her half moon slivers of brightening dawn sky and collar-brush of too long hair-<p>

"We were supposed to burn them, Rinoa, _why did you do that_?"

There's a boy standing over her and blood underneath her, and the children around her leak pus-ooze trickles of blood from blown-open flaps of spell-burned wrist, and she's _sorry_, she's _sorry sorry sorry_-

Rinoa Heartilly sat on a wall-Rinoa Heartilly had a great fall-Rinoa Heartilly _sat on a wall-_Rinoa Heartilly _had a great fall-Rinoa Heartilly sat on a wall Rinoa Heartilly sat on a wall-RINOA HEARTILLY SAT ON A WALL_-

There are pieces of her to pick up and she can't do it, she doesn't know how to do it, and something inside of her is kicking, something inside of her is _pounding_, and there's a hot thick rush of liquid down her legs, pooling into sunrise red at her feet-

The boy standing over her is looking at the puddle of sunrise red with pale blood-leeched cheeks, and the world is a hammer, coming down to smash streaking meteor tails of semi-conciousness across her eyes.

She can hold on long enough to feel him press his forehead to her chest, and then she is gone.

* * *

><p>At 7:15 Tuesday morning, Galbadian forces withdrew from the city, leaving behind almost a thousand dead and wounded.<p>

At 7:40 they rushed his grandson to NICU, leaving Squall standing alone in a hallway littered with wall-propped slumps of injured soldiers, broken juts of legs and arms and shoulder joints angled out before bandage-wrapped lumps of torsos.

Only critical care got rooms to themselves, so overcrowded was the hospital.

Laguna was standing in front of 349. Behind the door he stood squinting at with his hands in his pockets and a wordless staring guard at either shoulder was a machine that breathed for Quistis, that pumped her lungs full of simulated life one carefully measured inhalation at a time.

Three rooms down, another one did the same for Seifer.

He coughed into his hand, but it didn't budge the lump in his throat.

Farther down the hallway Zell limped cautiously along, favoring his right leg and holding his shoulder like each jarring little step was too much for it, his face smudged with dirt and flakes of drying blood.

Ellone was slouched in a chair across from him, her head in both hands and Kiros beside her, one arm in a sling.

And Squall-his gut gave a sick helpless lurch and he stumbled forward one halting uncertain step toward his son to bring a hand shaking toward his shoulder-

And pulled it back, sweeping it around to tug nervously at his ponytail.

The look on his son's face gut punched him like Raine's death, bringing tears to his eyes that he had to blink stinging away.

Somewhere down the hall, Rinoa was screaming.

"Let me out let me out let me _out _LET ME OUT-"

And each echoing thunder roll of that shrilly unfamiliar voice that did not belong to her anymore hunched his son forward under another burden, another thumping deadweight he could barely hold up, and Laguna stepped forward again with his arms hanging loosely down his sides, afraid to touch him.

He was afraid to touch his own _son_, this bleak-eyed cheek-scratched young man in front of him on the verge of shattering, and if he could just ball up his courage like these fists he curled into tight sweat-slick knots along his sides-

"Squall-"

His son's face came twisting slowly around to face him, and either he was in Laguna's arms or Laguna was in his, but suddenly he had his son sobbing up against his chest, clutching fistfuls of shirt he wrapped in loops around his hands, and this lump in his throat-

It wouldn't go away. It was only getting larger, all-encompassing, until he could barely speak or swallow or breathe, and the quiet heartbeat blips of vitals monitors charting pulse rates and low palm-muffled sobs of soldiers mourning comrades-

It all went away.

And there was just his son in his arms, letting Laguna _hold _him, letting him stroke wordless shaking attempts at comfort down his hair, the hallway blurring out around him.

* * *

><p>There are slivers of lucidity pounding their way back into his brain.<p>

First is a bright quarter-moon glare of white, leaking down through his lashes.

There's a flash of children playing on the beach, his mother twirling between them laughing and splashing and smiling, and he thinks-fuck it, he _knows_-there's sand between his toes and water in his eyes, but it's all right with him, because there's no more cold-winter bitch in his mother's eyes and Quistis is sitting on that weather-grayed porch with a book in her lap-

And now there's a flicker of yellow, and black-ink vine curve-

_-what's black and yellow and cries like a baby-_

No one's talking to him. Maybe they can't see him. But there's a little laughing blonde boy riding Cid's shoulders like the guy's his own goddamned personal steed-

And he used to be so fucking happy, y'know? That little boy with the stick sword who knew how to smile, that little green-eyed shit who had everything all figured out, who was going to grow up famous and loved and so fucking awe-inspiring no one would ever forget his name-

He used to be _happy_.

There's a hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him up into the light.

"Hey, man, it's Zell. The doctors said sometimes it helps if people sit here and talk, you know?"

There's a little quivering intake of breath.

The children are still playing by the water, and now Quistis is looking up from her book, and she's smiling, and it's the kind that goes all the way through him, because he's pretty sure it's for _him _and not that bland little fuck Leonhart-

And he can hear his heartbeat in his ears.

He can hear little shuffling whispers of sheet spread, getting smoothed out beneath a hand.

Nothing is right about this, because he's supposed to be bleeding out on a rain-greased sidewalk that smells like shit and death and settling layers of rubble smoke-

"You can't give up, ok? I mean-I don't want you to. Quisty wouldn't want you to either. We're all brothers and sisters, right? So we gotta'-we gotta' stick together. Selphie's gone, and Quisty, she's…we're gonna' hold together, though, you know-me an' you and Irvine and Squall."

Is Wuss trying-

Is he trying to tell him Quistis is _dead_? Is this some sort of motherfucking _joke_? Is this how he's supposed to be coaxed back into that fucking light that's starting to gather as a headache between his temples-is he supposed to _want _to leave this fucking beach where Trepe's alive and happy and smiling at him-

Is he supposed to leave this beach where _he's _happy?

What kind of selfish fucking _asshole_ would want him to do that, what kind of jerk-off fucking _shitlicker _would want to suck him back up into all of that, just so he won't be alone?

Well, he's got fucking _news _for Wuss-he's been alone for a long fucking time, and he's sick of it. He's _done_.

He's fucking out.

The beach is starting to shrink around him.

He takes an experimental step out into the waves, and he can hear Wuss' voice fading, his stupid little sniffles and his teary attempts at lame annoying jokes that make Seifer want to rip his fucking head off-

There are shrieks of seagulls whirling overhead and squeals of laughing children playing tag-

And Wuss' voice is an evaporating hum in his ears, insectile whine.

He takes another step forward.

"I'll be here everyday, ok? So you're not really alone. Matron told me once when we were kids…she said you were mean because you were afraid of being alone. And y'know, I think that's probably true."

_Fuck _him if he thinks Seifer's going to take a step back, if he thinks he's going to come stumbling backward out of this numbing salt-sting current ripple around his calves just because he has a fucking friend waiting for him, just because someone gives a shit if he wades all the way out-

He doesn't want to-doesn't Wuss _get _it? He's lost his mother and Quistis and Raijin and Fujin, and he's so fucking _tired. _He's fucking tired and he can't remember how to be this boy piggybacking Cid's shoulders with an exuberant war whoop that makes Quistis look up from her book again, smiling.

He wants that little motherfucker back.

He wants-

He wants his fucking _mother _and Quistis and his _posse_-

And he wants Wuss to stop crying over him like a fucking girl, he wants everyone to just give up on him like they should have a long time ago, because he is _fucking exhausted_. He doesn't have the energy anymore, all right? Maybe old Seifer with Garden at his feet and a pretty dark-haired princess waiting for him to ride her off into the fucking sunset could have endured all of this, could have lost friends and family and short-lived loves of lives-

But this Seifer doesn't.

This Seifer wants to bury his fist in Wuss' jaw, because the little fucking moron just won't _shut up_, and now the echoic bellow of ocean underneath his feet is receding, is leaving him all alone on a beach where laughing dancing children start to wink out like lights of stars going out, one at a time-

And the quarter-moon glare of white is back, and Wuss' voice is stronger now. He's snorting and pausing a lot and making little hairball hacks of wet throat-clear and trying to tell Seifer something about their childhood, some stupid shitty boyhood recollection-

And he can hear this little budding smile in Dincht's voice, even though he's crying.

That glare of white is a half-moon glow above his head now.

"So you and me an' Irvine are all standing there around this flower pot trying to figure out what to do before Matron sees it, so I go run and get the broom, and Irvine's trying to pick up the bigger pieces and he cuts his finger, right? So all of a sudden here comes Selphie around the corner, and she sees the blood and starts freaking out, crying and stuff, and then Quisty comes running in and starts lecturing all of us, and you get pissed-"

Quistis on that weather-stripped porch is the last to disappear, and he thinks he can see her looking right at him, he thinks that little lift of her hand is not an arc of page-turn but a little flicker of farewell wave, and maybe she can't see him at all-

Maybe even if she could she wouldn't spare even that one short flick of the wrist for him-

But he's going to pretend she did. He's going to pretend that she can see him, that this is one final moment between them even as she's fading away, even as the beach and that rotten rain-sagging porch is vanishing and there's a soft gel pack pillow underneath his head and a shrill _beep beep beep _of heartbeats ticking slowly out across a green-glowing monitor-

The glare of white is a ceiling-hung lamplight swinging softly above his head.

His gummed-shut eyes peel open with painful bandage-tear rips that make him shut them all over again, that make him cringe blinking away from that glare of white, and there's this little plastic bubble over his mouth and nose that fogs up like rain-steamed window glass-

And Wuss' voice has gone out.

There's a hand on his shoulder, squeezing a wordless grateful 'welcome back'-

And now he's awake in a cold sterile room without her, trying not to cry.

He's not a huge fucking success at it.

* * *

><p>Orphanage<p>

Centra

1 Week Later

"What are you drawing?" Cid asked, clasping both hands behind his back and leaning carefully over the boy's concentration-tense shoulder.

Daine Vance looked up with a smile, then promptly went back to describing arcs of yellow across crisp sketchbook paper like the kind his wife used to hand out, and Cid's answering smile did not quite reach his eyes.

He sat down on the porch beside Daine, listening to it groan underneath his weight, and looked out across the beach toward the water.

He felt a thousand years old today.

Everything still looked the same, physically; titanic bullion globe of clear-sky sun and pretty diamond-scatter of sea tide rumpling into gentle beach-broken waves farther down the sand-

Except every time he blinked, he could see ghostly afterimages of his wife's dress twirling in the breakers, clutched after by flailing hands of tiny laughing children. Every time he turned his head just so, there was Selphie's white-shining headstone reflecting sun-scatter back at him, reminding him there would be more to follow.

The next time a little blue-eyed blonde who used to make him drawings of rainbows and sneak cookies to Zell after Seifer was mean to him again came home to Cid Kramer, it would be to occupy a little six foot square of fresh-tilled earth beside her sister.

He had not cried after getting off the phone with Laguna Loire; Daine was watching, big wide child's eyes that expected Cid to tell him everything was all right, and so he had merely swallowed the first blinding wave of his grief, choking it back down into an aching tangled ball in his gut. He could still feel it there now, lead-heavy and cold as the winter-tinged breeze that sifted Daine's hair in playful finger flicks of incoming storm, sitting like a fist inside him.

"Are you sad, Cid?" Daine asked very quietly, his crayon scratching smiling stick figure replicas of himself and his new family beneath a perfect oval of yellow-ochre sun.

Cid folded his hands very slowly in his lap. The boy had probably spoken only a dozen words since his arrival at the lighthouse nearly a month ago, and hearing his voice now startled him somewhat out of his reverie. He aimed his smile sideways at the young boy, not meeting his eyes. "What makes you think that, Daine?"

"When you got off the phone. Sometimes I look like that too, when I think about Mommy and Daddy."

That fist twisted inside of him, and he leaned over to set one hand down on top of the boy's bent head, keeping it there as Daine's hand stopped moving. "I got some very bad news today; that's all. I am a little sad, Daine, but you're here with me, so it can't last, right?" He brushed his hand very gently down the boy's head toward the nape of his neck, and the little ducktail flick of overgrown hair there that reminded him of Seifer's. He had only ever allowed Edea to cut it, Cid remembered with a little nostalgic smile that hurt everything inside him.

Quistis used to sit here on this porch the way they did now, reading books Seifer tried to tear screaming from her hands because she was not paying attention to him.

Cid had to blink again.

The last time she had visited, Quistis had seen a monster, a pathetic sunken skeleton of a man trying to let go, to give up on everything he had forced his children to endure: a life that was too painful, too _hard_, a life he did not want anymore because it hurt him too much.

For just a moment, he wanted to give up all over again. He wanted to take that first fateful step forward into that mirror-calm ocean with its sun burning memories of spring gardens and summer barbeques down onto his shoulders-

And he wanted to go join them all. Selphie and Edea and soon Quistis-soon the rest of them as well, the way Fate was taking his children from him-they could all be together somewhere that wasn't this beach with its haunting dune-echoed cries of children and gulls and wives that became storybook monsters.

Daine held the paper out to him. "I drew this for you."

Cid fixed his smile carefully back in place. "It's wonderful." He touched the boy's hair again, and in the lemon-tinted afternoon around him, ripples of bronze became little sand-sprinkled waves of blonde, hunched over a book.

_-cid seifer broke one of my dolls again-_

_-quistis trepe reporting for duty sir-_

_-cid do you like my dress matron made it for me she said I look pretty-_

_-I'm not going to fight your decision sir I obviously could not meet Garden's standards and if you feel you need to take my license-_

"Daine," he said very softly, coughing the break from his voice. "You know, there were children here before you, and a mother for them-they called her Matron. We all loved her very much; if she were here now, she'd tell you that the stars that come out at night are really the people you love, watching over you. That's where your mother and father are, and as long as you know that, then you can't feel alone, right?"

Daine picked his crayon back up and sat for a long time, staring down at it.

Cid felt tiny little reaching fingers slide carefully inside his own, hooking across palms gone long soft with desk work, and he felt a sharp bone-snap of a twist inside him, breaking something. "Do you have anyone up there, Cid?" the boy whispered.

He felt his lips begin to quiver before the first tears crept from underneath his eyelids to streak warmly down his cheeks.

A little blue-eyed blonde crashing shrieking through the waves-

Cheerful morning sunshine smile, waking him up as the first rays of dawn began to slip little questing fingers through half-open blinds-

And his wife's smile, waiting for him in the evenings and ushering him out the door in the mornings, beaming up at him from between arcs of spring greens and pinks and yellows-

He did not reach up to wipe his face. "Yes."

"Do you think they're happy?"

"I do." He said it steadily, calmly, and the little answering squeeze he got in return made him smile up into that scudding cloud-covered bullion globe in the sky, getting slowly walled away behind storm gray.

He was not sure at all if he really believed it. Quistis locked away behind her gently wise smiles and ice-walled exterior of meticulously perfect soldier, marching in flawless tireless lockstep with all Garden's many rules and regulations and endless paper reams of policies-

Had she ever been truly happy? Had he taken that away from her so very long ago, the same way he had stolen and butchered her childhood?

He did not know. He did not know at all, and not knowing was a rift as wide as a universe inside of him, black hole bleak.

He could only sit there wordlessly holding this new child's hand, this fragile start over he was so very, very frightened of shattering, and stare up into a slowly darkening sky.

Raindrops caught vanishing shafts of cloud-filtered sun, and became streaks of shooting stars across contusion-colored clouds, if he squinted his eyes just right.

* * *

><p>The only thing he could hear in this sterile echoic room that still, even now, reeked of blood and spell smoke and stomach bile vomit was the drip drip drip of her IV line, trickling sedatives into the woman he loved.<p>

There was not much he could see, past the fan of sweat-scabbed hair spread out over bone-white pillow as pale as her face.

He had stopped hurting three days ago.

There was just nothing left inside of him; something had rodent-nibbled away every little ache and gut-twist of pain that sagged him howling in his father's arms, and now the only thing he could bring himself to do, the only thing he was even still _capable _of-

Was to sit here blankly staring at the mother of his child breathing shallow narcotic slumber while inside of him the empty space where his heart used to be chewed itself wider.

Irvine beside him and the mournful pain-groans of soldiers in the hallway behind him-

They did not exist for him anymore.

His whole world had become the barely perceptible up and down chest heave of her breathing, and the rubber-soled _tap tap taps _of footsteps carrying nurses with updates on his son's condition. Three months premature and barely holding on-

He didn't want to think about it.

His voice when he spoke was a mixture of gravel and sandpaper. "It's not Rinoa anymore."

Irvine stirred half-asleep in his chair, smudging exhaustion from his eyes. He had Exeter across his knees and a paper coffee cup in one hand, long cold. Squall could see the sharpshooter blinking at him in the window above her bed, a rumpled bloodshot ghost with a little crease of frown between his eyes. "I have to-I have to-"

The numbness was starting to wear off, just slightly.

Irvine set the coffee cup on the floor beside one boot, that little crease of frown going deeper. "Squall, no one's askin' you to make any decisions right now. Dust's still settling all around, so I think-"

He shook his head, looking down at his hands.

There were new scars all across his fingers, shiny stretched-tight ribbons of healing pink, and he kept rubbing the pad of his thumb across them all, like this could scrub away every smiling curve of reminders he didn't need.

He'd be seeing Esthar's final stand in his head until the day he died.

Irvine's coat rasped across leather-creaking seat back, bringing his teeth together in a clench that hurt his whole jaw. "No. She's gone."

"She's still in there somewhere, Squall," Irvine told him gently, tipping his hat up out of his eyes. "She hit you with a Curaga heavy duty enough to keep Seifer and Quistis alive. For a little while at least," he amended, his lips going tight in that window pane reflection. "That was Rinoa, Squall. Ain't her fault she got mixed up in the middle of all this-not like she asked for it, you know?"

There was a weight on his shoulders that felt like the entire damn world, pressing down. "She killed those kids-she used them as draw points to work up the kind of power she needed to save me," he said quietly. "Maybe she didn't mean to, but she did; Rinoa never would have done that, even to save me. She'd want me to…she'd want me to make sure she couldn't hurt anyone else." He brought his hands up to tighten them shaking around the arms of his chair, and the wood underneath his fingers gave a rib-snapped crack.

"What are you going to do with her, then? Can't kill her. We both know that," Irvine said quietly, shifting his gun. "I'm sick of it, man. We've lost too many of us as it is."

He slid his hands back down into his lap, folding them together.

He sat staring down at them for a very long time.

* * *

><p>The numbness will not last forever.<p>

He has always known this, but now when it is beginning to wear off, now when he sits here blinking saltwater sting from eyes that suddenly cannot see very well anymore, he realizes he is not _ready _for this, he can't just say _good-bye_-

He's already had to say good-bye.

He has already hunched over a hospital bed with an empty echoing cavern for a chest, watching green-shining pulse spikes on a screen that's going to go black in just a few short hours.

And he doesn't _want _to do it again-he _can't _do it again-

Except he has to.

Except he has no other choice, because this woman in this bed draped in twists of shadow, this great love of his life who used to be a pretty smiling girl-

This mother of his child-

He's choking.

He can't even say her name, cannot even feebly croak its first simple syllable-

There is so much wadded-up grief in his throat, he can only sit here soundlessly sobbing with his friend's hand on his shoulder, pressing the heel of one palm into his eyes.

"I'm not going to kill her," he rasps when he can finally speak, and there's a creak of leather underneath Irvine's hand as he tightens his fingers and Squall's trying to squeeze out a breathless panting 'thank you' when he sees the sharpshooter's ponytail tilt itself in a slow head shake he can just barely see in the window above her head-

He can't say anything anyway.

He slides his hand up over his friend's because he is so very sick and _tired _of being alone, because this small touch of empathy is the only thing he can hold onto in this building howling hurricane that is consuming his entire chest-

Her eyes are open.

They are soft and brown, just like he remembers them, but they are not seeing anything anymore.

Medication sheen; that's all that's left of her.

He has to look away.

* * *

><p>The doctors do not want him out of bed.<p>

The doctors can kiss his fucking ass.

He is tying his boots one slow meat-shred of unraveling stitch at a time, and there's a little smile on his lips that doesn't reach his eyes, because he's picturing the way she'd do it.

By counts of two, probably, after holding up both strings to make sure they were utterly, perfectly even.

He pulls the cuffs of his pants down over his boots and uses the railing of his bed to help himself to both feet, and he's standing, finally-swaying and shivering and feeling a little like he's going to vomit, but fuck them he's _doing _it-and from here the door's a thousand fucking miles away.

He makes it there anyway, because it's for her.

Today he's going to say good-bye.

He's not going to cry or scream or rage-and who the fuck is he kidding, he's still _pissed_, because this is not the goddamned ending Matron told him he'd get one day-what kind of shitty-ass story _is _this-

He balls his hand up into a fist that shoots tension up his arm and through his shoulder and all the way down into his aching bandaged ribs, and he takes a deep breath.

He wants to go home. Not back to Garden with its crowded shining hallways and classrooms that will always be too vacant, without her there-

He wants that little seaside cottage with the sandcastles and the mother who loved him and the bossy blue-eyed blonde who tasted like saltwater taffy the first time he kissed her all those very many years ago, and he's wondering why that one little detail is still stuck inside his mind like a knife quivering in wood after all this time-

And the door swings open.

And for just a moment, Zell Dincht is a shapeless blur of shadow in the door frame, and it's not until he blinks, it's not until he looks away and brings his arm surreptitiously up across his eyes that his friend suddenly takes form.

He's cracking his knuckles.

His eyes are just as sleeplessly red-veined as Seifer's, but he's got his hand out to clasp this tear-smeared forearm that just can't seem to stop motherfucking shaking, brother to brother, and for once in Seifer Almasy's whole goddamned life-

He's not too proud to lean a little.

Zell's holding him up, and maybe he's holding Zell up, because the hallway in front of them's the longest fucking thing he's ever seen, and neither of them wants to take the first step.

She's waiting for them at the end of it, and y'know, the irony's fucking killing him, because that was the only thing he really wanted, through all of this-

Except she's only waiting for him because she's not going anywhere. Because she's never going anywhere ever again, and there's that fist back in his throat, and he's sure as shit glad Zell's in a lot better shape than him, because his knees are fucking cloth underneath him, right now.

"You ready?"

He is never going to be ready.

Put him on the front lines to die. Torture the fuck out of him until he's a fetal-huddled shitstain on the goddamned fucking floor-

But don't ever expect him to be fucking ok with this. He is never going to be fucking _ready _for this, not in a goddamned million years.

The world is still going on around him, though, and it doesn't give a shit-he's just another squalling fucking baby in the masses, whining about the _injustice _of it all, so he slides his foot one experimental inch forward, and there's little fucking crybaby Wuss right next to him like a crutch, and y'know-

He's glad.

There's a not-quite smile between them, and maybe it's not enough to bring warmth to the glacial wasteland that is his chest, but it's…it's fucking _nice_, you know?

There is a jigsaw click inside him, and he realizes maybe this is a little piece of the ending Matron wanted for him, after all. Maybe he didn't get the girl or the sunset or the marble-carved monuments boy Seifer used to stay up late thinking about-

But he's not alone.

He thinks that was probably the most important part of her hopes for him.


	26. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

This is Rinoa Heartilly's coffin:

Brushed-steel curves molded like a clench of fist around breath-smoked plexiglass, holding everything together. A little blinking diode at the corner of one eye, security camera iris wink.

There is a little fist-sized screen above her head, charting every breath she takes and each subtle finger twitch of movement she makes, and outside breath-smoked plexiglass, there is a wheel of stars and far-off gaseous billows of planets that goes on forever.

The boy whose name she has forgotten again is standing outside, watching her.

There is just enough room for her to bend her arms into ninety degree angles that bring her hands up to sit plaintively against the glass, if she wants to.

She doesn't.

She is trying to understand the name that is a mantra inside her head--but everything is a jumble of soporific haze and mockingbirds and insistent scratching whisper-

_-kill the children burn the children rinoa rinoa we have to BURN THE CHILDREN-_

There are no children, anymore.

She has killed them all.

This at least she remembers.

The boy outside her coffin stands rigidly unblinking, like he is afraid to look away, and the insistent scratching whisper is stronger now as she returns this rigid unblinking stare-

_- don't you remember rinoa he betrayed you he put us here he's supposed to love you he's supposed to be your knight knights don't do this do they-_

He doesn't look like a knight to her.

He looks very young and strained and sad, and he is standing with his hands behind his back and there is something burrowing along the edges of her mind, trying to get in-

"Squall."

This name she doesn't recognize bounces shivering off the walls of her coffin, and the air she's drawn to say this is a stale breath-mask puff in her lungs.

He's looking away from her when she says it, and she watches his head dip in a nod that scrapes his hair along his chin, and suddenly there is a shifting underneath her and a gear-clank clunk of metal on metal-

And her coffin is tilting.

There is a deflated-tire hiss coming from that security camera iris wink, and her eyelids are suddenly very heavy, and now the boy's face is an underwater ripple in front of her-

There is another clank, and then everything is still and silent and stagnant, for just a moment, and this air she keeps pulling into her lungs coils like smoke in her head and the boy's face goes even more indistinct and she is lying there blinking up at the stars when suddenly that deflated-tire hiss becomes incoming storm rumble-

And she is soaring.

Stars and planets and vanishing eye blinks of station lights become streaks around and above and behind her.

The insistent scratching whisper is gone.

There is only blackness now, forever.

* * *

His son stands at the window for a long, long time.

It is still taking him a while to work up his courage, to take this first shuffling step forward that will put him close enough to lay his hand on that grief-hunched shoulder-

But he does it.

And his son does not flinch away. There is no corresponding side glance of acknowledgement, no half smile or gravel rasp of thanks, but he has not expected this anyway.

This gulf between them is not going to be bridged in days or weeks or perhaps even months, but now there is a tentative _something _here, and he will take whatever he can get. He's like a dog groveling for scraps, and it does not even matter, because it is simply enough, right now, that his son does not hate him.

He stands beside his son at this window that is now just a blank black slate, and he says nothing.

There is nothing to say. He can only keep his hand firmly on that hard-muscled shoulder, squeezing familial warmth down through that layer of jacket into the cold-flinching flesh underneath. And certainly not for the first time, he wishes Raine were here. He is bumbling and inept and unthinkingly clumsy, and he does not have the words for this at all-

But his wife would have. Squall's mother would have.

Just being here is going to have to be enough, for right now.

His voice is a clot in his throat, when he finally speaks.

"Come on, son." He still has to roll this unfamiliar word around in his mouth, tasting it. "You have a little boy to get home to."

There is a half smile now, and maybe it barely lifts his lips, maybe it doesn't reach his eyes-

But it's for Laguna.

This is all that matters to him.

* * *

They say death is a montage, a blurry half-blink of filmstrip playing all your greatest hits-

But this is not what she's seeing.

She is very cold and very wet and above her is a vaulted arch of sky, cloudless.

She tastes blood or sand or both-it's all a grit-caked lump in her mouth that cracks between her teeth, and it takes three long slow blinks before she recognizes the sun in the sky above her head.

There are waves lapping up underneath her breasts, and a boy leaning over her-

He is carrying a duct-taped stick and there is a smile on his face and it is not until he turns hollering back toward the shore that she realizes he can't see her.

"Matron, I found a crab! There's a crab here!"

And suddenly child Quistis materializes beside him, and she has her arms crossed and her lecturer's face on and now the boy is scowling, a back-of-the-classroom sneer she can't believe she never remembered, junctioning or no junctioning.

"Seifer, you can't touch it. You're going to _hurt _him."

"No I'm not, Quisty, shut up."

She can turn her head just enough to see them, and suddenly this bloody sand-congealed clot in her throat isn't distracting her anymore, because she is smiling.

They are just the way she remembers them.

The boy is a streak across the sand, but the girl is faster, and she slams him tumbling to his knees, and there are little needle pricks of returning sensation in her salt-bloated hands now, twitching out ghost echoes of this memory that plays out in front of her.

She is not surprised she ended up here.

She rolls herself onto one side and from there to her stomach, and four more blinks clear sand-gummed adhesive from her eyes-

And suddenly she can see her mother, hanging laundry on a breeze-fluttered line she has to wrestle back into place, laughing. "Seifer, Quistis, be careful!"

She hooks fingers bent into shriveled-up talons into the sand underneath her, and she starts to cry.

Selphie is waving from the front porch, and beside her is Irvine offering one of Matron's roses with a flourish, and just beyond them backlit in bright sunglow is Squall ignoring Ellone-

Seifer has child Quistis pinned on the sand and Zell is flying to the rescue, and she is sobbing now-she has not cried like this since Selphie died, and this simple sunlit tableau has crushed every ounce of cold-killer mercenary into the sand underneath Quistis Trepe, and she can only flatten her cheek against this beach that sounds like Matron's laughter, and ride it all out.

She has been a soldier for so long, she has almost forgotten these children brawling in the sand-brief whispers of half-formed memory are not enough; every detail is here in this sun-etched afternoon.

Seifer's hair is too long, and uncombed.

Matron has a smudge of dirt under her right cheekbone; Irvine is missing two baby teeth.

Selphie is sticking crayons up her nose, and she is trying to laugh now, but it's a sickday hack in her throat, and that congealed blood-lump of sand suddenly comes back up with a vengeance.

She holds her hair out of her eyes as she vomits.

The ocean is still creeping into her boots. She feels it tongue her toes, and it is strange to her, in a sort of abstractly intellectual way, that she can still feel when she is dead.

Even stranger:

What is most wrenching of all to her is not Selphie sitting on that porch holding Irvine's hand, or the sight of Ellone drawing a slow reluctant smile out of Squall-

It's the green-eyed boy with the stick sword, and the fact that she's never going to see him again.

Sometimes, when his head is angled just so, it looks like he's smiling at her.

The sun is starting to burn out above her, and this short-out spreads a shadow that leaves her shivering in the shallows, and there is water in her ears but somehow she can still hear Matron saying something about a plug-

She lays her cheek back down on the sand trying to ponder this, and suddenly this childhood beach is not a rough sandpaper scrape underneath her face but a scratch of cotton rumpling her hair and just grazing the corner of one eye-

She's not sure she understands what's going on.

There is more talk of a plug getting pulled, only she is not sure it's Matron saying it anymore, and this childhood home by the sea is suddenly starting to smell like stale vanilla-scented air freshener-

And there is a weight on her chest.

There is a weight on her chest and something covering her hands and her breath is suddenly a vocabulator sigh in her ears, and when she draws a line of moisture along her lips with her tongue, Quistis tastes plastic.

The sand is all gone now, though she thinks there is still a lingering hint of blood.

Her last fading memory of the beach is a thundering tidal-wave roar-

Or maybe that's her heart, pounding in her ears.

Her heart-

Is her heart _beating_?

She tries to shift a hand, to twitch an arm, but everything is too heavy, everything _hurts _and she wants the cottage and the boy with his stick sword back-

She just wants to not hurt anymore; she doesn't think that should be too much to ask.

Something that feels like an unshaven cheekbone is pressed to her open palm; she tries to curl her fingers-she wants to _feel_, for just a moment-but there's nothing more than a little jolt through her hand that moves her thumb a fraction of a milimeter.

And then, just like that, her eyes are open.

She is staring past a curve of plastic to a head bent over this hand she cannot move, and the lamp-leaked glare that scrapes her eyes like razor blades polishes this head to a bright sunlit glow.

She can't see anymore; the streaks of her tears fog her mask, layering him in white smoke, but she is smiling.

There is another little jolt through her palm, and this time she feels her pinky spasm, hard enough to thump his cheek.

When he blinks open both eyes to find her awake, his face brightens like the sun.

**A/N: So we've reached the end, finally. I want to give a big thank you to everyone who reviewed, and hell-to everyone who read this in the first place and stuck with me through over 300,000 words. The Seifer/Quistis fandom sadly appears to be dwindling, so I am grateful there are still people hanging around with enough interest in the pairing to give this a chance. You guys offered me a lot of encouragement that I greatly appreciated, and I hope you got half the enjoyment out of reading this that I derived from writing it.**

**There will be a sequel to this fic. I realized about halfway through that I had way too many ideas for this particular story arc for them to all be explored in one fic, unless I wanted it to be about eight million pages long, which I did not. It's long enough as it is. I also did not want a neat bow-tie ending, but I did want to close everything off enough that while still open-ended enough for a sequel, this can be read as a standalone. ****For a while I really debated over posting the sequel; I've already begun writing it, but the audience for Seifer/Quistis fics just doesn't really seem to be there anymore, unfortunately, and so I seriously considered just keeping it quietly to myself. However, I figure a few people at least will read it, and this site is sadly lacking in Seiftis fiction of late, so I figure everybody still writing for this fandom needs to post their little hearts out. I will not start posting it for another month or two; I'd like to get ahead of myself so that if the nasty little infected pus-oozing thing that is writer's block strikes, I have chapters waiting in the wings so six months do not pass between updates. I'm halfway through the second chapter, and estimate I'll probably start posting once I finish off chapter four. Updates will be a little more slow in coming this time around, however, though I still plan on updating regularly, maybe every few weeks or so. I wrote this entire fic (569 pages in Microsoft Works) in four and a half months. No joke. I don't know what possessed me to do it, but it was a hell of a ride. I'd like to slow down a little on the sequel, however, because it will probably be one of my last multi-chaptered FF 8 fics, so I'd like to draw the process out a little longer. (We'll see how that goes; so far all of my attempts to shift away from fanfiction to original have failed horribly.) I'd like to really delve into the history of the sorceress line and the effects of magic on those wielding it in the sequel, but we'll see-I tend to be assaulted by plot bunnies at random and all of a sudden the story's veering off in a direction I didn't see coming at all. (A little frightening, when you're the author. Hey, what the hell? Well, I never would have predicted THAT.) Keep your eyes out for the sequel (if you are interested in it,) around late December, early January. I may have it out earlier-it just depends how quickly I write.**

**Anyway, thanks again to those of you who have reviewed, who have stuck with me through 569 pages of FANFIC, for chrissakes, who have encouraged me to keep going on days I wondered if anyone even gave a crap about this story, and who have actually given me a little push toward re-considering my decision to not publish anything. And for you silent readers who have yet to chime in, I'd love to hear what you thought of this fic overall. I promise I don't bite.**

**Thanks guys. See you in a month or two. **


End file.
